


Striving, And Other Normalcy

by readfah_cwen



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, Minor Drug Use, Multi, Suicidal Imagery, WWII/Nazi References, discussions of consent, suicidal implications
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 12:58:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2652839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readfah_cwen/pseuds/readfah_cwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was a teenage dream, a dirty little secret, someone’s high school confidential, a slick chrome American prince, everything you could ever want. It was a life, but it wasn’t one Blaine Anderson wanted to live anymore – luckily, a universal upset gave him his first second chance since 1951.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> My fic for the [Blaine Anderson Big Bang](http://blaineandersonbigbang.tumblr.com/). Much thanks to the organizers for putting this all together, my wonderful beta, and my incredibly talented artist [ebanashka](ebanashka.tumblr.com) created the Skull/Heart/Soul piece which is currently my background because hell fuckin yeah.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Suicidal implications/imagery, discussions of consent.  
>  **Notes:** Multishipping/no endgame, not really a pairing fic. For the curious, Sebastian takes prominence in interactions with Blaine.

_♠Don’t assign me yours.♠_

Once upon a time (November 2010) a boy turned around on a staircase at a hesitant “Excuse me?” to meet the love of his recent life. It was like a clock’s gears locking together, the rhythmic and steady work of a sewing machine. Two parts being brought together to form a functional whole.

_“My name’s Blaine.”_

_“Kurt.”_

A minute before the boy descended this staircase with a pocketwatch in hand, he had stood on the landing and accustomed himself to a blazer he had never worn and smiled at faces he had never seen before. He was a stranger to meet a stranger, but as he spiralled down the steps counting down to _3 - 2 - 1_ \- _0_ in his head he knew he belonged here.

His name was Blaine Anderson, and he had a job to do.

\--

There was lightning in the air when Kurt came home that day.

Kurt shook off his umbrella and tucked it into its stand, looking around for his fiancé. Blaine stayed home that day, quiet and distracted and buried in himself. Their fighting was taking its toll on both of them, and hanging up his jacket felt like slipping his robe off at the start of a boxing match. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, and Kurt finally saw Blaine, sitting out on the fire escape.

“Blaine?” Kurt came over to the window, kneeling and peering out. Blaine was sitting with his knees up around his chin, eyes fixed on the dirty grey bricks of the building opposite. “It's raining. What are you doing out there?”

“I like being up high,” Blaine said. Kurt blinked, brain stuttering, restructuring that. Not right. Blaine wasn't _afraid_ of heights, but he was distasteful, like they were as gauche as wearing stripes with plaid. “It helps me think.”

“I didn't know that.” Kurt leaned forward, uncertainty tugging at his breastbone. “What are you thinking about?”

“How we're getting married.” Blaine finally looked at him, eyes reflecting more than they let in. “But you've never met my parents.” Another stutter. Not right. Kurt had met them, a lovely, smiling couple who looked very much like Cooper and not very much like Blaine. Had it just been that once? No, couldn't be, they had gone out for dinners too, they _loved_ Kurt ...

“I have,” Kurt told him. “We can go back and spend time with them over Christmas if you like.”

“I'm cold,” Blaine said abruptly, getting to his feet, brushing off his thighs. He turned, looking down at Kurt, smiling perfectly with wide flat eyes. “Remember when you thought I never got cold?”

“Only because you wore so many scarves.” Kurt reached out, fingers skimming Blaine's, sleeve speckling in the soft patter of rain. “I thought, 'Thank god, here's a boy who finally gets style.'”

“You're very sweet.” Blaine turned his hand over, fingers skimming Kurt's palm, and it was like a jolt that brought Kurt's arm slamming back toward him. Kurt cradled the numb flesh, watching Blaine back up, hands coming up so he could grab the rusty railing. The dull red peeked out sullenly from between Blaine's white-knuckled grip. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Kurt rubbed his wrist, frowning. “Are you okay?”

“I love you,” Blaine repeated, every millimetre of his smile the same, a rictus that locked the muscles of his jaw in place. Lightning flashed, highlighting them. “And you love me. But that's not enough anymore, is it?” His smile never faded. Kurt's heart slammed against his ribs as thunder slammed again. The rusty water was pooling, dripping from Blaine's knuckles.

“Come inside, Blaine. You'll catch a cold ...” Kurt trailed off as he realized that Blaine was bone dry. The smile on Blaine's face finally faded into something softer, sweeter, an echo of a night -- _Blaine wrapped in his arms, New York tapping him on his shoulder_ \-- tugged at him as the rain tugged Blaine’s head further back.

“Goodbye, Kurt.” Blaine kept tipping back, ruddy-red-kissed hands releasing as he fell back in an entirely too-graceful arc over the railing. A scream locked in Kurt's throat as he scrambled through the window, reaching for neat boat shoes that were descending from view, fingers hitting the bars of the railing and locking around them.

“Blaine!” Kurt yanked himself up, fingers slipping in the water, and looked over the edge of the fire escape. Past the falling skies around him there was the pavement floors below. There, and in between, and everywhere Kurt could crane to see -- nothing. Blaine had vanished. With a terrified, broken sob, Kurt stumbled back and hit the brick wall, elbow catching the window, pain flaring sharply.

The window slammed shut. Kurt’s keening cry followed it.

(This wasn’t the end of the story either.)

\--

There was a silence. The caesura of taking a deep breath before you continued. That was normal. What wasn’t normal was the ripple in the blackness, the twist like a rug being yanked straight, and then nothing was right anymore.

His name was Blaine (sometimes) Anderson, and he was late to a very important date.

\--

“Welcome back, sleeping beauty.”

Blaine woke up slowly, following the voice out of the swamp of silk sheets around him. It felt like the worms that made it were still around, in his head, spinning around his brain. He gave a shake of his head to clear it, blinking muggily. Standing next to the side of the bed was a tall man.

“What ...” Blaine pushed himself up. “What's going on?”

“What do you remember?”

“I ...” Blaine frowned. Falling, maybe. The sensation of missing a step, amplified. “My name is Blaine.”

“It is.” The man settled onto the bed. “You can call me ... the Writer. Or A, if that's a bit pretentious for you.”

“Like _Pretty Little Liars_?” Blaine's confusion lightened a little. “I know _Pretty Little Liars._ ” Everything else was an empty blur, though.

“I get why you're disoriented.” The Writer patted Blaine's knee. “Dying will do that to you.”

Blaine stopped breathing – but if he had been breathing, could force himself to inhale sharply now, he couldn't be _dead_.

“What?” Blaine placed a hand against his chest, feeling his heart pound. _Make of our hands, one hand, / Make of our hearts, one heart_ \-- what was that? The tune buzzed on his lips even as fear rocketed through him. “I'm not dead.”

“Well you died, but you're not dead,” the Writer reached over, gently tugging Blaine's hand down so he could pat it. Blaine stared, uncomprehending, between the steady movements and the Writer's words.

“That's --” Blaine's gaze darted around the room – the ticking came from clocks, so many clocks, _it's_ _time to begin_ – and he jerked his hand away. “That's insane. How can I – you're crazy.”

“Hang on to that thought.” The Writer got up, and standing there, Blaine was unsettled by a sense of familiarity. He couldn't name the man or where he had seen him before, the face wasn't right, but he almost felt like he could guess the way A would tilt his head or smile. “I'll be right back.”

He walked out of the room. Blaine curled his hands into fists – _just how capable I am to pull through_ – then relaxed them, fingers twitching like he had a piano to play, hands up in his hair and threading through his coarse curls and yanking to try and ground him. Music kept flitting through his brain, poking and prodding, distracting – _everybody wants to_ – and it only worsened the sound of the tickings around him, _tick tick tick_. Blaine curled forward, trying to even out his breathing, his pants catching the _tick tick tick_ , like rain on a windowpane, and hadn't there been rain?

Yes. Rain, falling around him, a fire escape. A boy, a young man, really. _Blaine!_

He sat up, hands sliding out of his hand. The music quieted somewhat. Rain, he could remember that, and how unusual it felt to have his hands in his hair. Wait. He gelled his hair. He gelled his hair and there was rain on a fire escape and a boy.

“Soup's on!” Blaine looked up to see the Writer standing there, bearing a tray with a steaming bowl of soup, a tall glass of juice, and crackers. As it was brought closer, Blaine saw a book as well, and his brow crinkled in confusion as it was set in front of him. The soup smelled heavenly (and if he was _actually_ in heaven right now ...) and looked like chicken noodle. “Eat.”

The Writer sat in an armchair next to the bed (when had that gotten there?) and watched as Blaine took a hesitant sip of his soup. It tasted as good as it smelled and Blaine took another mouthful, eyes sliding away from A's eager gaze to the book.

He choked.

“Easy there.” The Writer leaned forward, slapping Blaine on the back as he hacked around the soup. Eyes watering, he finally gulped down air, and dropped his spoon with a clatter back in the bowl.

“What the hell is this?” Blaine stared down at the book, the music from earlier returning as a distant thrumming, fingers running across his heartstrings. _Monsieur Blaine_. That would be bad enough, but the cover – that was him. The birthmark blooming across the nape of his neck was one he knew, like an inky fingerprint he had never seen. “Is that – that is – it's me.”

“It is.” The Writer considered it. “Good picture. You have lovely shoulders.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.” The Writer paused. “Hopefully. Truth be told, this is all a little new. It’s not supposed to be like this.”

“And what it’s supposed to be like?” Blaine turned the book over, eyes skipping over _landmark gay novel_ with a tremor.

“Your usual immortal reincarnating genie situation,” the Writer said. “Maybe genie isn’t the best word. You grant people’s wishes, but not with magic.”

It seemed useless to repeat that he didn’t understand, so Blaine only stared back balefully.

“Picture this: I am a lonely man, down on his luck. What do I want?”

“Job security?”

The Writer laughed. “That too. But maybe, I want someone who will help me out. That’s a normal thing to want, yes?”

“Yes …?”

“And I want it so badly, and maybe I have a little magic to me, because one day my wishes are granted.”

“And …”

“I get a helpful, handsome young man who knows everything about job security, or how to take me by the hand and make me swoon.” The Writer sighed dramatically. “Anything, it could be anything. But you’re the answer to those prayers.”

“ _Me_?”

“Yes, you.” The Writer smiled. “You’re good at it, too. Born for it, even.”

He waited for a flash about parents, but nothing came. Maybe a cliff, the rugged earth of it tearing into the sky, but that could be anything.

“I … help people?” Blaine heard _and make art_ from somewhere he couldn’t place, gaze darting around the room. A woman – where? His own head? His memories, playing hide and go seek in the crannies of his skull?

“For a while, until they can stand on their own. Then …” the Writer gave an expansive shrug. “You go away.”

Is that how you died without dying? Reincarnation? Blaine was sure this man was crazy, but at the same time, something tugged on his ear and said _listen_. With nothing but his instincts to rely on right then, Blaine decided to do so. The whispers outside his brain calmed when he did.

“That’s impossible.”

“That’s magic,” the Writer corrected. “Now, don’t get all anxious about _not real_ and this and that. You know it, in your bones. It’s how you came to be.”

“And how did I come to be?” Blaine asked, gaze challenging. Did he have a lamp somewhere?

“I wrote that book.” The Writer pointed to _Monsieur Blaine_. Blaine looked between them, and it was like something snapped into place. That was right. He knew that was right, just like he knew his name and how to skip rope.

“You wrote … me.” Blaine reached for the book, then curled his hand away. “Why?”

A long silence. The Writer lost a step on that one, then abruptly gave a thing smile.

“A funeral.”

“What?”

“I attended a funeral. The boy in the coffin – a friend. An acquaintance.” The Writer cleared his throat. “Beautiful. His hands, they were folded on his body. So delicate. Like a baby bird that needed protecting. It ... inspired me. My muse.”

“Your muse ...” Blaine swallowed revulsion. “A dead guy.”

“Yes. But you are so much more than him. You have no idea how important you are.”

Blaine pulled away fractionally, comforted that the Writer did not follow, eyes deep and sad and somewhere Blaine couldn’t imagine. He decided to change the subject. “If I’m not real, how am I here? How was I anywhere?”

How did he escape the pages of the book in front of him?

“I’ve never known,” the Writer admitted. “But it happened. One day, you woke up in 1951, and started helping people. I’ve just watched. There’s not a lot a writer can do, once they send their works out in the world.”

“I …” Blaine closed his eyes. He wanted to believe this was just a crazed kidnapper with his hands on Photoshop, but he couldn’t deny the unreality of this situation, or how convincing the whispers in the back of his head were. And if it was true, what did that mean for him? He didn’t know why he would keep doing what the Writer described. It sounded so lonely, leaving people behind, doing what they needed and getting nothing back. Why would he do that? “Did I have a choice, in helping people?”

“I never asked,” the Writer said. “I never got to. But you always were helpful. If you read the book, you’d understand.”

“I don’t think I want to,” Blaine replied, eyeing the book. “I just want to know how to stop it.”

“Stop it?”

“Yes, stop -- doing that.” Blaine sat up straighter, mind racing. Clearly whatever cycle he had been trapped in was broken, perhaps only temporarily. If he wanted to escape it while he was clear-headed, this was the time. “If magic is real, if this insane story is real, then there has to be a way to reverse it.”

“I don’t think you want to …”

“I’ve got amnesia and nothing to lose,” Blaine said bluntly. “I want to.”

 “You can think it over.” The Writer got up, and left.

Blaine watched him go, frustration mounting, then sent the soup tray crashing to the ground. It was satisfying for a second, his heart bashing along with the sound of china shattering into fragile pieces against the floor and the splash of soup following like a burst of blood, but shame soon followed.

He got out of bed to clean it up, toes wiggling against the cold floor, and froze at what he saw. The bowl was reassembling itself, pieces healing like broken skin, spinning up on its edge and falling right-side up and soup crawling back into the bowl like a cat seeking a nest.

In only seconds it was like nothing had happened, and Blaine’s entire frame of reference shifted.

Crouching, he poked the soup, which lay passive now. Uneasily, he reached for the book, but despite being in the line of fire it was dry as bone. It couldn’t be, and yet -- it was. _You know it in your bones_. Slowly, with a tightness to his knuckles, he cracked it open to the first page:

_The American, Blaine Anderson, arrived in Paris on a hot summer day._

\--

Kurt couldn’t let it go.

“He didn’t disappear, Kurt,” Rachel said, brushing the hair back from his forehead. “It was raining, you couldn’t see properly. He must have caught the ladder and run away.”

“Or he’s dead and somebody dragged him off before I got there.” Kurt couldn’t describe it, the yawning pit the side of his head, where he’d always naturally inclined it to listen to Blaine. There wasn’t a Blaine there anymore, at his elbow, his shoulder, touching his wrist, lips on his jaw. Kurt couldn’t find Blaine on the end of a call, a drive away, in his bed. Kurt didn’t have the words for his certainty, but he knew Blaine was nowhere he could follow.

“Talk about cold feet,” Santana said, bringing all the thoughts circling in Kurt’s head to a halt. Rachel hissed at Santana, but Santana’s eyes were tight around the corner and Kurt couldn’t bring himself to be angry.

“I’m going to find him,” Kurt said. Even if Blaine had run away so they wouldn’t have to be married, he would get Blaine to say that to his face. The story, their story, couldn’t end here. It wasn’t satisfying. It was pointless. It was too soon after every other damn thing and –

At least Sam and Tina believed him. Not that Sam was much help. They had talked, the next day, and all he got was:

“ _Kurt, dude, I swear, I don’t know where he is. I went by his place, and it’s just … empty._ ”

“Are you sure?”

“ _Yeah, I asked the neighbours, they said it was foreclosed by the bank years ago. They didn’t have any idea who Blaine was_.”

“But … I’ve been inside there …”

“ _Me too, man. So I used a little Blonde Chameleon power to break in, and it’s empty. Totally empty_.”

“How is that possible?”

“ _I don’t know_ …”

Kurt didn’t know either, couldn’t wrap his head around it. Witness protection? Where did things go from believable to fiction? Kurt had to know, and to the possibility that he wouldn’t, well --

Kurt wasn’t letting it go.

\--

Blaine only got through a handful of pages into the book, finding it too strange, even for his newly topsy-turvy world. But he found himself, despite everything, convinced. Names came to him before he turned the page to read them, like catching sight of an old friend on the subway, and even if this immortal reincarnation stuff was bullshit he had definitely read the book before. Ever since he’d seen that soup bowl realign itself, opened doors to nothing but the vastness of space, watched the Writer turn corners and disappear, drunk from cups that never needed refilling – he’d be pretty dumb to deny magic. So if you combined the book and the magic and the certainty that settled low in his gut you got – belief. A belief marked by what could only be his lost memories draping around him like a reassurance. _It’s okay_ , something said to him. _It’s okay_.

The Writer gave him space, and Blaine used it to pace the room, thinking it over. Clothes were in a dresser by the bed, and the chinos and bowties and the yellow cardigan were _him_ in a way he couldn’t explain. He even found gel, and it seemed the more he pulled himself into a familiar shape, the more things came to pad out those spaces. He remembered the curve of a coffee cup, an ear, a warm hug, a man with red dirt on his knees who liked to chew tobacco. He learned to move with the random bursts of memory, as he thought over his situation.

Why would he want to stay a -- a fictional boytoy? It didn’t sound pleasant. The boy on the fire escape might have been kind, but Blaine had no way of knowing that, did he? All he knew was that he was a person, he _felt_ like a person, and it crawled under his skin to think he wasn’t one.

He wanted to change that.

Maybe if he was real, he’d have the freedom to never end up _here_ again. There was something about those clocks he just couldn’t handle. What felt like two days in, but might have been two months, he covered up as many as he could with his thick comforter to drown out the ticking.

Then he settled onto the bed’s permanently wrinkle-free sheets, drew his knees up to his chin, and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. The Writer returned, and Blaine turned on him, springing off the bed.

“I mean it.”

The Writer looked to the blanket covering the clocks, and tutted. Blaine wanted to scream, to hit him. _It’s okay_. He took a deep breath.

“Mean what?”

“I want to go,” Blaine said. “I want to go, and I want to be -- real.”

“Reality isn’t all that great,” the Writer said. “This is a mistake.”

“Then let me make that mistake,” Blaine said. “Unless you really are a kidnapper.”

“I’m not,” the Writer defended.

“Then tell me how to fix this.” Blaine stepped forward and burned his gaze into the Writer’s, hoping he felt it, the branding shame if he didn’t allow Blaine this request. Magic was real, and he was a living, breathing book character, so a look had to carry a power.

The Writer looked away. Blaine stepped forward, tilting his head, catching his gaze again.

“ _Please_.”

“Fine.” The Writer sighed. “I’ll send you to the Madame.”

“The Madame?”

“She sees all. She can help.” The Writer headed to the collection of elegant vases and slim glass bottles and squat clay pots which decorated the top of the dresser. Blaine watched curiously as the Writer rummaged around, before coming back with what looked like a small subway token.

“Take this. You’ll need it to get into her building.”

“Where?”

“You’ll know it,” The Writer said, pressing the token into Blaine’s palm, fingers brushing along Blaine’s heart line. “I can’t say more than that.”

“Why not?” Blaine squinted. “Cosmic rules?” That seemed like the sort of thing that might be at play, here.

“Because I’ve never been,” The Writer said, chuckling. “This is all second-hand news.”

( _Once, there had been someone named Ice. Blaine was sure._ )

“Okay.” Blaine tucked the token into his pocket, tracing the slight curve of it against the fabric. He wondered if he should say more to the Writer, thank him, _something_ , but nothing came to mind. He only stared blankly up at the unremarkable face, and watched for the other shoe.

“Just go out that door.” The Writer pointed behind Blaine, who frowned. There wasn’t a door there. Just clocks.

He turned, and saw he’d been proven wrong. A tall purple door sat there, a smiling, stylized sun carved onto the front in a style he remembered from antiquing adventures. With a final look to the Writer he headed towards it, patting his pocket to make sure he still had the token.

“Blaine,” the Writer said, before he left.

Blaine stopped.

“Be safe.”

The plea shook him somewhere he couldn’t name or find. Blaine nodded jerkily.

“I will.”

Then he was stepping out the door, a deep breath the only company he had to god knew where.

\--

Blaine emerged from a subway, and any lingering doubts he might have had about magic vanished.

He was on a nondescript grey street. Maybe nondescript was the wrong word. He could tell you all about it -- the straight grey sidewalks with their constellation of used gum and pigeon shit, the line of office buildings that crossed from the seventies (and there was something there, a name, _Joshua_ ) to the fifties all the way back to the two thousands. All together it was very normal and utterly generic.

It was creepy.

Blaine tugged his cardigan straighter, looked around him, and paused at a bright red set of doors that popped against the grey and brown buildings. _You’ll know it when you see it_.

Humming a little tune -- ‘ _cause the players gonna play play play_ \-- to ward off the chill in the air, Blaine walked over and examined the doors. Locked. And where a doorbell or intercom might normally rest there was a small slot.

Again, obvious. Blaine slipped in the token, and after a moment, the doors clicked. With a final wary glance over his shoulder, Blaine let himself in.

A lobby greeted him, one with a checkerboard floor and a brass-doored elevator where the only option up. Blaine wrinkled his nose at the elevator UP button, which was gummy with a crime scene investigator’s wet dream worth of dirty fingerprints. ( _CSI_ made him think of someone, but -- no, he didn’t know.) He tapped it with his knuckle, then wiped the back of his hand on his pants.

After a short lifetime, an exaggeration he could actually lay claim to, the elevator doors slid open. Stepping in, Blaine examined the row of buttons. Shiny, shiny things. Clearly the janitor bothered to come in here, at least. He didn’t need the fingerprints to point his way though -- the number 13 sat at the top, a sign if there ever was on. He pressed it.

The elevator moved up slowly. That was expected. What wasn’t was the -- _clank_ \-- and the shudder, the rattle, the slight bounce which led him to grip the brass rails and contemplate death. “You are not going to die in a magic alternate universe,” Blaine reassured himself, closing his eyes.

The elevator bucked like a _boat at sea, the salt griming his nailbeds, Al--------dros shouting at him, Alexandros? a wash of fish spreading across his feet_ and Blaine was about to be sick.

 _Ding_. The thirteenth floor. Blaine ran out once the doors opened, reassured by the steady floor outside. Forget Knowing All There Was To Be Known. Blaine’s first question for the Madame was going to be if there were stairs for the way back down. Resettling himself, _Composure, Blaine, it’s all about composure_ and sorely wishing the voices would take a siesta for the day. There was only one way to go, with bright red wallpaper and more checkerboard floor. At the end was a thick wooden door, on which a freshly-scrubbed plaque read THE MADAME SEES ALL.

Blaine knocked.

“Come on in, Blaine.”

Well, it wasn’t false advertising. Blaine let himself in, and was almost instantly enveloped by a surge of white cloth. Batting it aside, he found the room filled with scarves, anchored to the ceiling and blowing this way and that in a wind he couldn’t feel. Blaine was starting to think all magic was inherently unsettling, like a chill down the back of your neck you just couldn't shake.

“What? I think it’s cute!” That was the woman’s voice again. Almost familiar, really. Like a radio coming into tune, where he could almost just place it.

“It’s very nice,” Blaine said politely. He could hear faint tapping, and followed the sound through a woven forest, nearly tripping over a tangerine scarf that wound itself about his ankles like a friendly cat. Finally, he pushed past a sky-blue cloth and found himself facing a woman’s back.

Her dark hair fell in ombréd curls down her back, and she was wearing colourful dress, sitting at the table and tapping away on a … laptop. As he came around her, he saw that it was open to _\-- Etsy._

“I sell homemade necklaces,” she said, smiling brightly up at him. The Madame was beautiful, and Blaine was instantly fond. He didn’t think those two facts were connected, but there was _something_ , another one of those annoying flies buzzing through the holes in his memory.

“Have we met before?”

“Hmm.” Her smile turned mysterious, which seemed more suitable for a seer. “Do I look like someone you know, Blaine?”

_I don’t know how to love him …_

“Tina!” Blaine sank into the chair opposite her, taking her in with new clarity. “Tina, she was -- is -- my best friend, she …” Blaine wasn’t sure he wanted to remember why the word _vaporub_ just crept through his mind.

“Yes.” The Madame, Tina, nodded. “I just picked the face nearest to the surface of your memory. Can’t have you seeing the true me to see all, you know how magic is.” She waved a hand.

“I don’t _know_ anything. I've lost my memory.”

“That's silly, of course you still have it. It's not like you lost it in the couch cushions.” She clucked. “It’s like -- ice. Like you have a layer of ice, keeping it all down. But little trickles are bound to pop through, because as they say, winter is --”

“Coming?”

“Not forever. See! You do remember things.”

“Pop culture. I don’t know how that’s supposed to help.” Blaine leaned back in his chair. “Unless knowing that Kim and Kanye got married unlocks the secrets of the universe.”

“You’d be surprised.” Tina -- it was hard to think of her as anything else -- started typing again. “But let’s focus on you. I say _Pygmalion_ , what do you think?”

“George Bernard Shaw.” _The safety of cheap shelves and cheaper books_. “Ovid.” _Thomas_. “My Fair Lady.” _Rain, beating against his face_. “Freddy Prinze Jr.”

“Full stop!” Tina held up her hands. “Freddy: Yay, or Nay?”

“Yay? I think he got cuter as he got older …”

“Oh, _same_.” Tina giggled and held her hand out for a high five. Blaine returned it, hesitantly. “But back to business. You know the original myth?”

“Of course.” _A lecture hall, a textbook that was dogeared all the way through. Thomas, with an inquisitive twinkle that never went away_. “He makes the statue, and because he loves it, it gets brought to life.”

“And these days people just online date.” Tina shook her head. “So. Who’s Pygmalion?”

“The --” Blaine stopped himself. “No. The sculptor.”

“And the statue’s name?”

“She’s …” Blaine peered at the laptop, like he could mentally tap into Google. If Thomas could come back and haunt him right then with an answer, that would be great. Blaine didn't like feeling stupid.

“We don’t know a name, from the classics. But we call her Galatea.”

“Galatea.” Blaine tasted that. He wondered if she liked the name. “Am I supposed to be sensing a parallel with her?”

“You can sense whatever you like,” Tina said. “But do you know what you are right now?”

“A statue?” Blaine guessed.

“I think it’s better to be Pygmalion, isn’t it?” Tina asked. “You get to hold the chisel then.”

“Okay.” Blaine leaned back. “What’s the chisel, then?”

“Good question.” Tina looked down at her laptop, clicked a few things, then turned it around to face Blaine. The browser was open to a JPEG of a human skull. Blaine started.

“A skull?”

“Proof of death,” Tina explained. “You’re a muse, but you came from somewhere, didn’t you?” Blaine remembered the writers words -- _fragile baby bird hands_ \-- and pressed his lips together, nodding shortly. “Well, that’s component one. The second is …” Without looking, she closed off the tab and brought up the next page, which had a human --

“Heart? A heart?”

Blaine carefully touched his own chest, feeling the th _ump-th_ ump of it, the layered in beats of _\---gory, holding Blaine securely in his arms, Blaine’s ear pressed against his chest and inhaling Dawn laundry scent_. He shook his head to clear it, aware Tina was watching him carefully.

“What does that represent?

“Honest love,” Tina said. “You need an example of Honest Love, because it shows us parts of ourselves.”

“And lifts us up where we belong?” Blaine was so used to rain on his face, but he was struck by the rapid association of _Kurt_. Something German. A kiss to his mouth. He lost it as soon as it came.

“If that’s how you see it.”

“Do I need actual body parts?” Blaine dropped his hand. “Because that’s a little morbid.”

“I can’t tell you what they’ll be. That’s not fun.”

“So I’m just supposed to wander aimlessly?”

“Everything has an aim.”

“So -- fate.” Blaine leaned in, considering the depths of the Madame’s eyes. There was a touch of _something_ to her level gaze that seemed like space and the _Twilight Zone_ theme, and none of that spoke of Tina. Tina was solidity and reassurance. Tina would actually _help_ him. “You’re saying this is all fate’s plan?”

“No, it’s _your_ plan. Don’t you get it?”

“Not really.” Blaine’s anger sparked. “Of course not. This is -- all I know is I’m Blaine Anderson. I don’t like dirty elevator buttons and I kissed a boy called Kurt but -- that’s not a person. _I’m_ not a person. How can I have plan if I don’t have a person?”

“The plan is to find your person, and by searching for it, _you_ build him. It’s your chisel.”

“So I’ll just make myself something else? How is that -- is there even a me?” Blaine tried evenly breathing around the tearing hole in his stomach that whistled wind in a sound a lot like _hopeless_. The Writer had said it wasn’t possible, and the Madame seemed to be backing him up.

“Your choices are you. You make those choices as you, memories or no. When you remember yourself, you’ll see that you are Blaine, and you’ll always be Blaine.” Tina got up, coming around to slide a comforting hand across his shoulders. “Cute as a button and determined as hell, to start.”

Blaine laughed shakily, looking up at her kind face and taking in some of her reassurance. “But you can’t be more specific to help? Like, what kind of coffee I like?”

“Medium drip,” Tina said immediately. “But I can’t get specific on the quest. Things will align as you start to understand what I’m saying, okay?”

“Okay.” Blaine missed her touch when she went back to her seat, pausing halfway there to look back at him pensively.

“Hermione?”

“Uh. Granger?”

“Shakespeare.”

“Oh.” Blaine reached back for the formless Thomas, who must have been a college student. “I’m pretty sure she was a statue too.”

“ _Or was she_?!” Tina wiggled her fingers mysteriously as she sat down. “Maybe she was just a whole lot smarter than her useless husband.”

“I remember that!” Blaine sat up. “She might have faked her death then hidden away with her friend, and pretended to be a statue, until her husband made up for everything.”

“And _that’s_ an interpretation you should consider while you’re questing.” Tina held up _Monsieur Blaine_ , which Blaine suddenly realized was no longer in his back pocket. “It’s very hard, when you’re playing between fiction and interpretation and inspiration. What you have to remember is that you have a chance to cover all your bases, and I don’t want you getting all discouraged, alright Mister?”

“Alright.” Blaine accepted the book as she handed it back to him.

“Have you read that yet?”

“Just a bit.” Blaine touched the cover, with his bare back (blinking as he swore a flashbulb went off to his right) before tucking it away again. “It’s weird.”

“Hmm. That’s fair.” Tina reached around, and closed the heart tab, revealing the last page to contain a -- butterfly. “The last one is the Soul.”

“The soul.” Blaine looked between the butterfly and her.

“Shut up. Do you know how hard it is to image search a picture of the soul that isn’t totally hokey? I thought this was pretty.”

“But I’m not actually looking for a butterfly,” Blaine confirmed, and when she nodded, he considered the implications. “So ... I don’t have a soul? How do I even find one?” How did you _choose_ a soul?

“Don’t think so literally. Look at the butterfly.” Tina tapped the screen. “Pretty butterfly. We're human because of the meaning we make. Do you get it?”

Honestly, all he could think of was the opening to _Reading Rainbow._ He shook his head.

“Look.” Tina spun her laptop around again, typing away. “I’m trying not to make the joke, but it’s pretty obvious. You want to be a real boy, right?”

The beginning notes of _I’ve Got No Strings_ began to play, and Blaine winced. “I think I prefer the Galatea and Hermione comparisons, personally.”

“No love for Pinocchio?” Tina clucked her tongue. “He can’t help how creepy he is.”

“I don’t like puppets.” _A room in a house, somewhere. And the inevitable feeling of -- something_. “Also, I don’t know if I was a mass murderer in a former life or something, but doesn’t he get to be a real boy after he becomes nicer? Am I supposed to be nice to be human?”

Tina snorted. “Now we both know _that’s_ not true. No, you just have to want it. Do you want it?”

“Of course I want it.” Blaine gestured around them, the waving drapes and the laptop and the book in his back pocket. “That’s why I’m here.”

“There are consequences to everything.” Tina’s expression’s gentled with sadness. “Humanity has its perks. It also has … loss. I think it defines them. So the last thing I’m going to ask you is: Are you willing to sacrifice for this?”

“Yes,” Blaine said immediately, then his thoughts caught up with him. He didn’t know what that sacrifice meant, what he had to find -- _the heart, the skull, the soul_ \-- and he didn’t know what little secrets could be lurking under the ice he was carefully treading over. He knew enough of his situation to know he was pretty new wrapping paper around an old re-gifted spirit, and that at very least, living meant dying someday. But -- that was what humans did, people who picked out their stepping stones as they wandered across the pond. So he cleared his throat and batted away uncertainty to look the Madame in the eye and repeated it: “Yes.”

“Okay then.” She stood up, tilting her head toward the sky-blue scarf that continued undulating slowly. “I’ll show you out.”

“That’s all?” Blaine got up, looking between the laptop and her. “Proof of death, honest love, and a soul? That’s all I need?” _That’s all_ was too casual a way to put it, but he had resigned himself to the fact that all-seeing didn’t mean all-giving.

Tina nodded, and started walking, and the scarves parted for her, a loose halo of a tunnel that Blaine hastily followed her down, jumping as chartreuse green tickled his ankles. Once at the door, she held it open for him, then reached up to cup his face.

“I see why you’re the world’s most wanted.”

“Thank you?”

“And you should really read that book.” She lightly slapped his face and he started, rubbing his cheek. She smirked wickedly. “That Turkish bath scene is really something else.”

“Uh, yeah, I’ll get to that.”

“Now get out of here.” She flapped her hands at him and he obligingly stepped out, a thought occurring to him just as she started to swing the door shut. Spinning around, he asked,

“Are there stairs?”

“Only one exit.” Tina was definitely laughing at him. “Sorry.”

Resigned, Blaine trudged back to the elevator from hell.

_tbc_


	2. of a story

  
_art by[ebanashka](http://www.ebanashka.tumblr.com)_

* * *

 

Blaine was in Paris.

It wasn’t remembering the streets in a concrete sense. It was a déjà vu tingle, kissing the nape of his neck, the patchwork of buildings and street signs like the afterimage left from staring at the sun too long. When he blinked, it was like he already had them memorized.

“ _Excusez-moi_ ,” a woman said behind him, and Blaine started, moving out of the way. The big, grey office building Blaine had exited had been replaced with an internet café whose name he tried to mouth out -- “Le May-Ller Dez Mondeh.” (He was trying, okay?)

Figuring his location was no accident, he pushed his way into the glass-fronted building. The guy manning the counter, a cute strawberry blond with glasses, looked up and smiled. “ _Bonjour_.”

“I don’t speak French,” Blaine said apologetically, then tried, “Uh -- _Francais, pas_ \-- speak ..”

“It is okay. I speak English. _Some_.” The man waved Blaine over. “I am Aldric. How can I help you …”

“Blaine. Blaine Anderson.” Blaine extended his hand and they shook, Aldric’s expression growing more intrigued by the moment. Blaine might not remember much of anything, but this -- this he knew he could do. “I need to use a computer. A …”

“ _Ordinateur_ ,” Aldric provided.

“Ode-natter. Internet.” Blaine let go of Aldric’s hand so he could rest his arms on the counter and lean forward. “But I don’t have a phone. Or money.”

“Are you lost?”

“Yes.” Blaine _was sitting on a bookstore counter, smiling down at a handsome man with wavy hair that fell about his face, the thin skin around his eyes darkened_ no, he was leaning against this counter, smiling hopefully at Aldric. “I can’t remember my hotel name.”

“A big party last night, yes?” Aldric asked, eyebrows waggling. “How do they say it? Forget your name afterwards?” Blaine laughed, ducking his head.

“You could say that.” Blaine looked as pleading as he could. “Just five minutes. I’ll check my email, see my reservations.”

Aldric hesitated, looking over his shoulder. “I am not allowed to …”

“ _Please_ ,” Blaine said, eyes widening. “I don’t want to sleep outside tonight.” Which he would actually have to do, come to think about it, unless another set of magic doors showed up … he could worry about that later.

“ _D’accord_.” Aldric pointed to a computer in the corner. “Five minutes?”

“Five minutes.”

Within one Blaine was set up at the computer, Aldric having thoughtfully choosing one with English settings. Aldric hovered by his shoulder as Blaine booted up a browser, but when Blaine went to Gmail and the password form and glanced over, he blushed and left for the counter.

Blaine opened a new tab and searched _Monsieur Blaine_. He scanned the Wikipedia page quickly as the next paragraph occured to him before he read it, just like with the book. _Anonymously written. Landmark gay novel_. He skipped the plot entirely, his eyes watering when he tried to read it. He went to the References instead, and clicked open some of the academic articles that had been cited.

One was about correspondence and he clicked out of it almost instantly, aware his time was running short. The next three he skimmed the abstracts, listening to Aldric clear his throat behind him, and he noticed a name coming up frequently: Jean-Paul Cormier.

Another search revealed Cormier was a professor at Université Paris-Sorbonne, and that he lay claim to the premiere collection of _Monsieur Blaine_ related miscellanea and papers. Which was as good as Blaine was going to get, because Aldric had just tapped his shoulder. Blaine started, closing off the browser hastily.

“Thank you,” Blaine told him, glancing up gratefully. Aldric fidgeted with his glasses, inclining his head.

“You’re welcome. You found your hotel?”

“Yes.” Blaine got up, pushing his chair in. “You’re a lifesaver. It’s, um, by Sorbonne University? Do you know where that is?”

“Paris IV? That is my school. I can show you, _une seconde_ ...” Aldric bounced excitedly, then went to the wall by the door, rummaging through a holder of pamphlets (and why a bit about _tan hands_ just hit Blaine, he had no idea) then returned with a map of Paris. “See, here …” he held it open then tapped the university area, then indicated where they were. “You can walk there, you just go over the bridge.” He traced the route. Then he handed it to Blaine with a flourish. “Here.”

“I can keep this?”

“Yes. So you don’t get lost again.” Aldric avoided eye contact, and Blaine’s throat suddenly got tight.

“Thank you,” he repeated, quieter, clutching the map to his chest.

“And if you need help in English, just say, _Parlez-vous Anglais_.”

Blaine tried the words out carefully, and Aldric smiled.

“Good.”

Blaine’s throat only got tighter.

\--

Blaine left the internet café feeling oddly shaken, then went to the university. There, a very helpful woman working in Cormier’s building pointed him toward Cormier’s house -- apparently he welcomed visits from his students on weekends, as he didn’t like to be at school then.

It was Saturday. The normalcy of the week struck Blaine as funny.

The professor’s house was back in the direction he’d just come from, and Blaine spared a glance for the view over the river from the bridge as he crossed it. It was beautiful, and very romantic, and it made him feel something he couldn’t quite place. He didn’t want to place it, not when he had to be in the right frame of mind to talk his way into the professor’s house, so he kept going.

At the professor’s house, he knocked, and waited a long minute. Just as he was about to knock again, the door opened to a handsome man with dark eyes and artfully tousled hair. He nodded slowly at Blaine. “Oui?”

“Bonjour. Parlez-vous Anglais?” Blaine awkwardly tried out the words Aldric had taught him. A past life whispered at him _“Blaine, it’s not so hard …”_ but he shook it off.

“Yes,” the man considered Blaine. “Can I help you?”

“I’m a student, at the university. You’re Professor Jean-Paul Cormier, right?”

“I am,” Cormier held out a hand to shake, smiling pleasantly. “And you are?”

“I’m Blaine Anderson.”

Blaine saw it, the slight flicker that went through Cormier’s eyes as he said that, mind obviously connecting the two names. Blaine wondered what that was like for this man, to see Blaine, so physically and nominally similar to a favourite book character. It was hard for Blaine to wrap his head around his unreality, but this hit it home.

“Are you a transfer student, Monsieur Anderson?”

“Yes, from America.” Blaine politely waited, but Cormier didn’t let him in. “May I come in?”

“I must admit some curiosity, a student not from my classes at my house,” Cormier said archly. “Is there a reason for your visit, _Mister_ Anderson?”

“Er.” Blaine hadn’t expected inquisition hour. “This is going to sound strange, but you know the book _Monsieur Blaine_ , right?”

“Yes.” Cormier leaned against the doorframe, relaxing his protective stance. “I noticed you share a name with the book’s protagonist. Your parents named you after him?”

“No,” Blaine laughed, hoping it covered up the flash of unease that was the mystery of his parents, the dead boy’s parents. “Just a coincidence. But -- I’m gay, and when I first came out, the book was a big comfort to me.”

Blaine pulled out the book from his back pocket, showing Cormier, who nodded.

“The American Penguin cover. 2003. The ocean image, it works well with the ending and Blaine being …” Blaine’s ears buzzed faintly, prickling his eardrums, and he watched Cormier’s mouth move soundlessly for a few seconds, before sound returned. “One of my favourites.”

What had that been? Cosmic spoiler guard?

“Yeah,” Blaine nodded emphatically. “I was researching it though, and I learned that you had one of the premiere collections related to it. And since I was already coming over to study, I thought I might ask permission to take a look?”

“Ah.” Cormier smiled. “I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm. It’s rare you find young fans of this book. Most are us are old scholars.”

“I think lots more young people should read it; there are a lot of valuable lessons,” Blaine said, which seemed to endear him all the more. Cormier let him in, and Blaine murmured his thanks, taking in the polished wood and abstract paintings on the wall. Upstairs, he could a child’s loud giggle and a woman’s soothing voice calling out in French.

“My daughter, she doesn't like baths,” Cormier said, nodding his upstairs. “My wife is the only one who can get her to take them.”

Forget parents. Did Blaine have _kids_? Descendents? He called himself gay, he felt gay, but if he appeared before people at random it was entirely possible some were women. If he wasn’t shooting blanks and doing everything they wanted, then – well.

“Cute …” Blaine wished he could take a moment to regroup, but Cormier was already leading him down the hall, around a corner, to a study. It was a handsome room, filled square books and oak floors that creaked under their footsteps. Cormier indicated a wooden drawer-like item which dominated the room against the wall, with a glass enclosure on top.

“Temperature controlled, out of the sun’s way. An expensive purchase, but worth it, I feel.” There was obvious pride in Cormier’s voice, and Blaine smiled while his mind set aside all the worries about lineage to focus on a possible snag. These items were clearly loved and well-cared for, and Cormier might not be willing to take them out for Blaine to play with.

Blaine walked over, peering through the glass top. It was lit from within. A few books rested there, some still in their rough manuscript format, but his eyes caught on the one which was only decorated by a familiar score of music. He hummed it automatically, each splash of a dark note tying him in securely to the lines they rested on, and he could feel every one as curved shapes pooling into his ears.

“Music studies?”

“Hm?” Blaine looked over at Cormier, then nodded. “Is that it? _Monsieur Blaine_ ’s manuscript?”

Cormier joined Blaine, flicking away a speck of dust from the glass. “Oui. The writer is believed to have a background in music, hence the focus on it in the book, and this draft title.”

It was Gershwin’s piece, “[An American In Paris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU1X3Wut-k0).” Blaine pressed his own hand against the edge of glass, fingers frozen still so he wouldn’t smudge it, wishing he could trace the notes with his fingers. He could say with confidence that it was a piece he always liked.

“Can I hold it?” Blaine blurted out, then felt his stomach fall at Cormier’s immediate head shake.

“I don’t take that out.” Cormier waggled his finger. Blaine opened his mouth, prepared to argue it, however futile a gesture it might be, but Cormier cut him off. “You can see the letters, instead.”

“Letters?”

Blaine cast back to his research. There had been something, in _The Private To The Public: Letters of Artists in Europe from the 1800s -- 1900s._ ‘Anonymity then becomes a communal identity which homogenises the expectations of a society where the ‘Fame Culture’ exist.’ What else?

Cormier didn’t wait for Blaine to puzzle it out. “The letters the author wrote, related to his work. They were anonymously submitted to me by the family of his publisher. All identifying names have been burned off.”

That was right. ‘The author of Monsieur Blaine is imagined as a young homosexual male, who lived in France and died not long after writing the novel, as all sales were redirected to newly burgeoning Gay Rights groups.’ Blaine had met the Writer but he himself couldn’t say any more.

“And I can read them?”

“I have photocopies.” Cormier guided him toward the desk, indicating Blaine could sit. From upstairs, a shriek sounded. Cormier spared a look up, then rustled through the drawers below the glass case, coming out with a sheaf of papers. “Here, look. I will just check on my daughter.”

He exited the room, voice suddenly booming as he said “ _J’arrive, petit chou!”_ Blaine sank into the smooth leather of the seat, spreading the papers out in front of him. They were written in a loose, spiky hand, sections blackened where the fire damage must have been in the original; random musical notes were peppered throughout and he could swear some was code.

They were also completely in French.

Blaine closed his eyes, exhaling in frustration. Why didn’t he think to get a pocket dictionary before he came? He didn’t have money, but surely a little theft couldn’t be …

 _“Nightbird is handling the missing trophy_.”

Blaine shook his head. He’d just have to wait for Cormier to come back, and ask what these said. Half an ear on the splashing, giggling, and shrieking coming from upstairs, he scanned the pages, flipping them over half-heartedly. A few words popped up a semi-regularly ( _Écosse_ , which he couldn’t guess at, but _Mulhouse_ and _Paris_ he knew). He kept looking to the fire damage, and was that half a _B_ that got burned off? All he knew is that they were written in the late 1940s.

Then, a page later: _Blaine_. It had survived the burning, and Blaine’s stomach flipped. He looked at the sentence surrounding it: _Sa mère demande que je retourne Blaine._ He thought _mère_ might be mother. Or ocean, but mother seemed more likely. Somebody’s mother demanded that he return Blaine.

Blaine had a mother. A mother who missed (the real) him, a real him who shared his name. She’d written letters and somewhere in history, she lived. He carefully traced the sentence.

“The sixth letter.”

Blaine looked up. Cormier had returned, sleeves now wet and a hint of soapy bubbles hanging off the tip of his bangs. He came over, tapping the letter Blaine was studying.

“The only name that isn’t blackened.” Cormier huffed excitedly. “It says that Blaine was a real person.”

“That’s amazing,” Blaine said, allowing himself the emotion the simple confirmation gave him. “I don’t understand the rest though -- why did she want him returned?”

“Ah!” Cormier snapped his fingers. “I forgot, you do not understand. See, here?” He tapped a place earlier on the page. The words: _Il me manque_. “Most of the letters are in code, or metaphors, or -- nonsense. He was a cautious man. But this letter, his emotions -- Blaine died, and this inspired the book. The author says that at Blaine’s funeral, he saw him, and wanted to write a new story for him. Perhaps he was a fan from a distance, because we think the real Blaine was a singer -- page three, he mentions, ah, the night in a singing lounge, and inspiration … perhaps they were friends. He does not mention spending very much time with Blaine, before this letter, but friends. And Blaine died.”

Blaine nodded; this all matched up with the Writer’s story. “So Blaine’s mother wanted his -- body, back?” Where was that? How far away was it? Was the real Blaine American too? How would Blaine afford a ticket back home?

“She did.” Cormier hummed, flipping the page over, tapping something: _de Charonne_. “But she didn’t get it. In the Saint Germain de Charonne cemetery there is a grave for Blaine Anderson. Just a date, saying he was twenty when he died, but by records he was buried there a few years before the book was written.”

“So you must know who he is. If they knew each other in real life. Where he came from --” Blaine rustled the papers “--somewhere in here, it must say who the Writer is, even accidentally.”

“Many scholars have searched.” Cormier settled on the edge of the desk, rubbing his thumb as he thought. “We know the writer to be a well-educated man, wealthy. These were written to his publisher, who he trusted greatly. We think they might have been lovers, as the letters reference ‘our nights’ many times. The publisher was a _Henri Arcand_. But his family does not know of any friends he might have had -- and if they did, they do not wish to say. None of the prominent men who died at a young age around that time were linked to him. An article written about him in a publishing magazine says that he liked to visit singing lounges, but no names were given. In a famous one, still standing, there is a picture of Henri with a man but the man is blocked by a hat. That is all we know.”

“And Blaine? Where is his -- home?”

“We think Scotland. After the trip to the singing lounge, it comes up a few times.” Cormier went through the pages, and indicated _Écosse_. “Blaine Anderson is a Scottish name. But we can’t find any records of him.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Things slip through cracks.” Cormier went back to rubbing his thumb. “Maybe, it is not his real name, but an _homage_ to his home country. And after the War, so much was lost … we don’t know.”

“Alright.” Blaine slumped in the chair, staring at the pages. It didn’t matter, did it? He would have to remember soon -- if Blaine-with-a-memory even remembered his real life. Did they count as the same person? Did the real Blaine have red hair and blue eyes? What would that skeleton in the Charonne show?

Wait. Skeleton. That was -- that was where he came from. That was his Proof.

“Is there anything more you want to read?” Cormier asked. Blaine’s gaze as lured back to the glass case, but Cormier’s tutted, “Other than _that,_ ” made him shake his head sheepishly. “Well, you are always welcome back. But now, I must start making dinner.”

Blaine stood up, holding his hand out for a shake. “I’ll stop imposing then. Thank you so much for letting me read these.”

“You should take my class, Mr Anderson.” Cormier shook his hand warmly. “I cover as much of the book’s history as I can.”

“I’ll look into it,” Blaine said, and with final goodbyes (and a final, lingering look at the manuscript, _An American in Paris_ playing in his head) he left the Cormier home. It was around five, and he figured he could find the graveyard and see his grave before nightfall. And after nighttime came …

Well, you were never too old to take up grave robbing.

\--

The graveyard was past Cormier’s house, past the internet café, another half hour at least. It wasn’t such a trouble to walk it though -- Paris had a reputation as a beautiful city for a good reason. The centuries of history cradled and traced the streets, the architecture beautiful and the variety endless, the people fascinating all in their own. Blaine admired everything as he walked, like it was a sunny day in a home he didn't know if he'd ever known, and if it weren’t for the whole ‘discovering the secret history of his dead self before he became a time share best friend-slash-lover to the world’ he would be just another tourist. The memories kept him company as well -- they weren’t coming faster, but instead of random buzzes, he was starting to get real flashes, scenes, which made him pause-midstep as his brain slotted them into place. He was putting together a puzzle, and --

_(--Before you met me_  
_I was alright but things_  
_Were kinda heavy_

_He was singing, in front of a uniformed crowd, eyes fixed on a lovely boy. That was Kurt, he knew, and he’d just met Kurt, he knew, and he was destined to be Kurt’s everything, he knew, and he knew that Kurt was his everything in turn. And Kurt wanted romance, so Blaine sang a song Kurt privately thought to be very romantic._

_You brought me to life_  
_Now every February_  
_You'll be my Valentine, Valentine--_ )'

\--Blaine was starting to get the general idea. He was given insight, the ability to be their perfect romance, their perfect friend, son, whatever it was that they were missing. It wasn’t just Blaine Anderson to the rescue. It was Blaine Anderson, a rescue.

Kurt Something-German had to be his most recent one, the boy from the fire escape, though he had aged a few years between those two memories. Must have, with that newly sharp jawline; so how long had they had together? How much of Blaine’s heart was bundled up with him? What was he doing, right now?

What were any of them doing? What happened when Blaine left them?

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Setting those thoughts aside for the sleepless night ahead of him, he turned the corner and came up to the cemetery gates of Saint Germaine de Charonne. The neighbourhood was composed of uniform white buildings with sharp roofs, and Blaine felt cloistered, almost watched as he went by the church. The large clock on the front read five p.m.

At the cemetery gate, he tried asking the guard if he spoke English, but he did not. In fact, he looked ready to spit on Blaine for even suggesting it.

“Blaine Anderson?” Blaine tried instead, hoping his grave was famous enough to warrant that.

The guard launched into a rapid stream of French that Blaine couldn’t follow, and his expression must have shown this, because the guard rolled his eyes then pointed to the map Blaine held. When Blaine opened it to the cemetery area, the guard tapped a north-east corner.

“Thank you,” Blaine said, then tried, “ _Merci … beaucoup_?”

The guard huffed, but seemed more amused now, and waved Blaine through.

Inside, the cemetery was even more claustrophobic than the streets outside. Blaine walked the narrow cobbled path through tombs and tombstones that were edged up against each other like the dead were rubbing shoulders down below. It was also very quiet -- the only other person he saw was a dusty old woman with a cane who was tapping it against a grave as she chatted amicably with it. Blaine tucked the map away into his back pocket, not feeling the need for it anymore, and made sure his cardigan sleeves were pulled down over his wrists.

When he got to the north-east corner he paused only a second before winding his way through the jam-packed graves, a faint buzzing against his eardrums growing louder as he got closer. A prickle of goosebumps accompanied the sound, tingling down his arms and raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

It should have warned him off, but instead he felt -- safe.

He climbed around one more tombstone, the cross of it catching at his hip, and then there it was. Wedged between a solid black tomb with roman numerals carved on the lid and a big, concrete cross was a marble grave which read:

Blaine Anderson

1929-1949

_Requiescat In Pace_

Blaine sank down onto the ground, leaning back against the tombstone behind him. The grave was well-maintained, and there were fresh flowers. Not bouquets, but little sprigs, bright bursts of colours, coins, curiously shaped buttons. Offerings. Blaine picked a button up; it was shaped like a many-petalled sun, the old brass smudging as his fingertips traced the wise, serene face carved on the front. It was ... familiar.

The tight-throat feeling was back, and Blaine lay it back down, freeing his hands so he could run them over his face and grind the heels of his palms against his eyes. They were burning, a fine razor’s edge of discomfort that made his lashes tremble and his breath shorten.

Blaine Anderson, at least, was loved.

\--

He stayed a half-hour until the guard found him, saying (Blaine presumed) the cemetery was closing. Blaine went without complaint, mind already working over his plan to get in.

It helped that he saw a shovel leaning against the church wall as he left.

\--

The hours until dark Blaine spent wandering the nearby area, borrowing a candle from the church and a matchbook from a nearby bar, feeling like he was working his way through some kind of adventure game.

Dusk fell, a hazy purple-blue that drew the streets up in a soft embrace, the yellow glow of the streetlamps only giving it extra depths. Blaine sat on the church steps, head bowed, mind straying to people ( _Thomas, who always smudged ink up into his fingernails_ ) and other places ( _the hot sand crawling between his toes as he surveyed the big sky of the outback, a lizard at warm peace on a rock_ ) and trying to piece together more of that puzzle.

Maybe it started with an H.

When the sky turned a velvet version of midnight blue that dipped the world in shadows, and the new guard had gone for a smoke break, Blaine got to work. He used precarious toe-holds in the old brick wall to clamber his way in, dropping down with controlled grace and nearly banging his shin on a dark tomb right away. After a detour to grab the shovel, Blaine made his way to his grave, which was still calling out to him.

The offerings were carefully placed out of the way on the black tomb, the buttons catching the moonlight and the flickering glow of his candle and the flowers bearing a new addition of a tulip he’d found discarded by a flower shop, one of its petals bent and blackened. Blaine could justify that the grave’s occupant wouldn’t mind, at least.

Just as he could justify that said occupant wouldn’t mind if he dug them up. So, cardigan out of the way (god help him if that yellow stained without money for a laundromat) and shovel in hand, he started digging.

\--

It took many, backbreaking hours. Blaine wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

In that time though, some of the things he remembered were:

  * that Gregory liked sushi
  * an ocean by Greece; drowning
  * the name “Nadia”
  * the surprise of being back in France
  * (a long time ago)
  * the last name Hummel,
  * and he used to be a lead soloist
  * (he could sing very well)



His most recent life was coming back to him most completely, and Blaine breathed through memories of coffees and fingertips and inquisitive, pushing, always pushing, attention and the lack thereof; all disjointed concepts with people slowly being stitched into the fabric of his memories.

(Like somebody named Joe, who wouldn’t appreciate Blaine digging up consecrated ground. It made him huff through already uneven breathing as he reached the final few inches.)

The sun was threatening to rise, the air a little lighter as the Earth continued to turn, when Blaine finished digging.

His wrist tapped against his temple as he wiped his brow, leaving a brush of dirt. Gripping the shovel he stared down into the pit in front of him. It wasn’t as neat as the ones on TV were, spreading out like a lopsided polygon, a curve near the top where Blaine had to work around a thick tree root, bare white gleaming like bone where his shovel had scraped the bark off. Blaine set his shovel next to the hole, then lowered himself in, thankful that whoever had buried him had not gone the whole six feet. He balanced on the edges of the coffin, then peered down at the rotten wood of the lid.

Above him, a light wind whistled through the rows of tombs, whispering over his head.

Blaine took a deep breath, then reached for his shovel. Raising it, he remembered the advice of a baseball player, maybe – _“Don’t choke it.”_ Blaine then brought the shovel down hard, sharply slicing the wood. It was practically mulch after sixty years, dark dirt flying up along with the wood chips as hit it again and again and again. When the lid was demolished Blaine hunkered down, brushing aside wood and dirt to see his skeleton.

The bones were yellowed with age, any flesh long gone, tendons snapped. They were also very small.

Blaine reached out and paused, hand hovering over the heart of the ribcage, right below the collarbone. The bones winged out from there to the knobby shoulders; Blaine’s hand settled on his own, rubbing at the growing tension. Then, with trepidation, he reached out and touched his skull.

Nothing happened. Blaine reached out and, with an apologetic twist, removed it. Leaning back against the earth wall, the coolness of it calming down the anxious race of his heart as he held his skull up to examine it. He suddenly remembered an art class in the nineties, posing in front of the class, eyes fixed on the empty sockets observing above the evaluating ones, papers tacked to the walls bearing catacombs worth of skulls, and Shakespearean quotes.

“Alas, poor … me.” Blaine laughed weakly, and brought the skull closer, fingertips running over the curve of the socket.

He would have been more maudlin, but a noise other than the whispering graves startled him. It sounded like a shuffling. Blaine took a deep breath and pushed himself up, peering over the edge of the grave.

A flashlight beam was dancing around, and Blaine remembered the ATTENTION! CIMETIÈRE EST SURVEILLÉ. sign he had observed while staking it out. So that was what that meant.

Blaine set the skull on the lip of the grave then pulled himself up quickly. Cardigan and skull in hand, took off at a breakneck run through the graveyard, cursing the tight winding maze of graves that seemed determined to trap him. Somewhere behind him, he heard a shout in French, but he kept going. Finally, he hit the wall where he’d come in. Hastily bundling the skull in the cardigan, then tying it around his waist, he used a tomb to lever himself up and nearly broke an arm swinging himself over the black fencing on top. Once he hit the streets on the other side, white houses and windows looking on all around him, he ran.

He was halfway through Paris when he realized he had nowhere to run to.

\--

A world away, Kurt was in a library.

He had started researching. He had no idea how to do that, how to find someone _missing_ , but since the cops had no interest in listening to him – apparently Blaine’s records didn’t exist, they thought he was _crazy_ – then he had to turn to the only search tool he had: Google.

He didn’t know what he expected. Old show choir blogs? Archived school webpages? The new-student interview he’d done with the NYADA press? Blaine had never been impossible to find online, and since he first specified in Ohio, those things came up. Kurt’s heart leapt into his throat at proof that Blaine existed, but when he went to print the pages, something went wrong. When Kurt refreshed, he got a 404 page on all of them.

Kurt tried _Blaine Anderson +New York_ next, and stared in surprise at a Wikipedia result that was near the bottom of the page. A novel. It wouldn’t have stood out – so what if a character shared Blaine’s name? – but he’d never seen this result before in all his many times Googling Blaine through crushes and heartbreaks.

So he clicked open the article on   _Monsieur Blaine_ , scanning the page in curiosity. It didn’t sound a lot like his Blaine – a singer being the only commonality – until he got to the plot. A name stood out like a thunderclap, and Kurt jolted up from his seat.

Once was coincidence. Twice was saying he needed to find a library.

So he hadn’t wasted any time in grabbing his coat and taking the subway to the nearest one. This was where he was now, checking the library catalogue, grabbing a guide to their sorting system, and running to the third floor, thundering past confused patrons. He had very little time before the library closed, and he needed to find it _now_.

Kurt ran down the library halls, gaze darting this way and that, just catching on the signs until he came to MO-NA. A hard left, down into the white-and-orange shelves, frantically scanning the ISBN numbers.

 _Monsieur Blaine_.

With trembling fingers, he tugged it free of the shelf.

_tbc_


	3. about a boy

Blaine leaned against the park bench. Homeless with a skull.

That had to be the start to either a really excellent joke or a _CSI_ episode. A girl, with blonde hair and pale skin, of the feline persuasion. Kitty? She liked those shows. She used to say, when Blaine was hitting a certain fever pitch of creativity – (a girl, with curling dark hair and brown skin, Angie, who was said to possess the ability to light the stage on fire with how badly she _wanted_ ) – that if this was _Criminal Minds_ he would be the last thing any of them would see before his murder spree.

Blaine laughed, patting the skull through the cardigan. If she could see him now. If he could see her, or any of those bits and pieces he was starting to assemble in his head.

“What's in the bag, buddy?”

Blaine started, hand protectively circling the skull and tugging it closer to his side. Standing there was a handsome man, head cocked to the side and hands in his pockets and casually intimidating in how little he cared about the imposition of his presence.

“I'm not looking for any trouble,” Blaine said slowly.

“Oh.” The man smiled brightly, all teeth. “But I am.”

\--

Kurt went too far in the book. _The crystal chandelier crashed to the floor,_ and Blaine was running away. Kurt flipped back. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. It _couldn't_ be real.

Then he found what he was looking for. Page 10. The corner dogeared from a previous reader. Like they knew one day Kurt would be here, heart bouncing off his ribcage, needing to read these words.

“ _I'd like to introduce you to the American – Blaine Anderson.”_

\--

“Stay back. I'll scream,” Blaine threatened. He didn’t know if anyone but his ghosts would hear it, in this empty park, but it was worth a try.

“Whoa.” The man held up his hands, eyebrows wrinkling. “Are you okay, Blaine?”

“I --” Blaine froze, staring at him again, the spray of freckles and the bright green eyes. “I know you.” Sebastian. “Smythe. Sebastian Smythe.”

“Okaay.” Sebastian nodded slowly. “Sitting on a Parisian park bench with memory loss? Are you LARPing Jason Bourne or something?”

“No, I ...” Blaine started to relax. Sebastian wasn't any kind of enemy, he could remember that. He was familiarity that only grew more familiar as Blaine watched him. “It's a long story. What are you doing here?”

“I've got family in Paris. Remember?” Sebastian caught himself. “Or, I guess not. I should be asking you that. Who brought you to the City of Love, and when do I get to glare at him?”

Blaine gestured, laughing, to the seat beside him. He didn’t have to remember to know how tired he was going to get of craning his neck, and the other sat with a smirk. “I'm here alone. It's a ... quest of self-discovery.”

“Blaine Anderson? Alone? I didn't think I'd live to see the day.” Sebastian quirked an eyebrow. “C'mon, there has to be someone. Are you in denial because he's some old ugly man with ugly kids?”

“No, like I said, I'm alone ...” Blaine ground to a slow halt, staring at Sebastian, who raised inquisitive eyebrows in return. “Wait. You --.”

\--

“ _American!” he declared, his eyes examining Blaine's body in its neat-pressed three-piece. “Welcome to Paris, friend. I'm Sebastian Smythe.”_

“ _Thank you,” Blaine said to the welcoming gentleman. They shook hands with formality, as custom was to dictate it. Their eyes remained married to each other in great contrast. “It's a pleasure to be here.”_

Kurt stumbled back against the bookcase, book limp in his hands, but not quite ready to drop it.

\--

Sebastian squinted. “Do you have a fever?”

Blaine didn't respond, instead dragging the cardigan onto his lap and tearing it open (“Is that a _skull_?”) and pulling out the book. He showed it to Sebastian, who laughed.

“The guy who shot this was a real artist.” Sebastian took the book from Blaine, finger just skimming over the back of photograph-Blaine's neck ( _Sebastian pressing Blaine down, hot mouth on the flared edge of his shoulder blades, fingers brushing up into his hair_ ) and gaze softening. “I saw it in a Barnes and Noble and nearly dropped my coffee everywhere.”

“You’re not real,” Blaine said.

“That’s not very nice.” Sebastian stretched his legs out, flipping through the pages. “To either of us, really.”

“We’re not real,” Blaine said, snaking out to grab Sebastian’s wrist and stop his skimming. “You and I aren’t -- we’re not -- let me see that.”

Sebastian handed the book over mutely, eyebrows crinkled in concern. Blaine found the page where he had left off, Book-Blaine at a party in a smoky lounge with beautiful people, and read on:

“ _I'd like to introduce you to the American – Blaine Anderson.”_

“ _American!” he declared, his eyes examining Blaine's body in its neat-pressed three-piece. “Welcome to Paris, friend. I'm Sebastian Smythe.”_

“ _Thank you,” Blaine said to the welcoming gentleman. They shook hands with formality, as custom was to dictate it. Their eyes remained married to each other in great contrast. “It's a pleasure to be here.”_

Page 10. Blaine’s fingers trembled as he shut the book. He’d met Sebastian Smythe on page ten of his life and didn’t that change everything? Blaine was supposed to be alone. He was alone and doing this alone and Sebastian Smythe shouldn’t be anything but ink on a page, a distant memory in -- Ohio. Yes, Ohio.

“Seriously, buddy, what’s up?”

“I just dug up my grave.” Blaine laughed weakly, dropping the book next to the skull.

“Oh.” Sebastian’s gaze wandered down to the skull, then up again. “I thought you didn’t want to go near that.”

“I have to. Because _I_ didn’t even know that.” Blaine suddenly felt, in a rushing _need_ he couldn’t understand, that he had to explain this to Sebastian. “I’m trying to become real.”

Sebastian nodded slowly. “I’m guessing you don’t mean that in a ‘no longer being a label slave’ sort of way. I’d miss the Brooks Brothers.” Blaine snorted, and it was very hard to maintain an aura of mystery and magic around Sebastian. He was too straightforward.

“I don’t. I mean that I don’t want to be -- reincarnated or reset or whatever over and over again.” Blaine cupped the skull, tilting it up, thumbs sweeping the cheekbones. “So I have to find three things and do _something_ and then I get to be free.” He looked over. “And … you too? I don’t get this. I’m supposed to be alone.”

“You’ve never been alone,” Sebastian told him, some of his dry amusement fading. “I sure as hell don’t know _how_ but we’ve both been running around ever since that book got printed.” He tilted his head, grinning. “I do look good for somebody pushing ninety, don’t I?”

“I … yeah.” Blaine stared down at the book. He could remember that hot flush, how very good Sebastian looked, the description of their first meeting -- this was an easier puzzle to assemble. They must have been lovers. “If we had each other, why _have_ we been running around?” Was he not remembering something brutal between them?

“Because free will’s a bitch?” Sebastian tipped his head back, staring up at the rapid wash of pink across the sky, wispy white clouds being painted gold as dawn came on. Then he stood, beckoning to Blaine. “C’mon. I’ll get you a hotel room.”

“You don’t have to …”

“Play the _Oh I couldn’t_ act when you don’t look like you’ve been sleeping in the woods.”

Blaine looked down at his arms and legs, which had gotten dirty and scratched despite his best efforts, and blushed. “Okay.”

“And on the way, try to explain this whole magical three items thing, because I am _not_ getting that …”

Blaine sighed heavily. “You’re not the only one,” he promised.

\--

Sebastian got him a suite at the Hilton’s Concorde Opéra Paris, which had to be a magic on its own because the thing was nearly two thousand euros a night and shouldn’t have been something just available last minute. Sebastian had shrugged off Blaine’s disbelief with a sly, “I know people.”

Blaine, tiredness seeping into his bones now that he had a place to allow it in, couldn’t bother to argue the extravagance further. Even if the suite felt _smug_ with how expensive its large bed and silk and mirrors and elegant touches were.

“Ostentatious springs to mind,” Blaine said, feeling ten times dirtier in the pure white room.

“Welcome to Paris,” Sebastian returned. “Now go shower. I’ll see about clothes.”

Blaine was ready to protest _that_ but Sebastian was already gone, and Blaine really did want to shower. The bathroom was all-equipped and Blaine took his time, drifting in and out of memories as the steam filled up the room. A knock woke him from his thoughts.

“Are you cooking lobsters in there or something?”

Blaine peered down. He _was_ starting to look red. “Nearly done!” Reluctantly, he shut off the water and opened the shower doors. Stepping out of the shower, he wrapped a fluffy white towel around his hips and found that Sebastian had opened the door in order to hang a bag on the doorknob.

Blaine checked inside. There were pyjamas, underwear, and a new cardigan/polo/capris set. He even found a bowtie, and hair gel. It being around six am in the morning and Blaine planning to finally get some sleep, he tugged on the pyjamas (royal blue, and almost familiar) before draping the towel over his shoulders and taking the bag out of the bathroom.

Sebastian was lounging on the bed, reading _Monsieur Blaine_. Dropping the bag onto one of the chairs, Blaine’s lips quirked as he noticed that Sebastian had flipped about three-quarters of the way through and was smirking in a way that could only be described as _naughty_.

“I’d ask what you’re reading,” Blaine began, and Sebastian didn’t even have the nerve to jump in surprise, cool green eyes flicking up to laugh quietly at Blaine. “But I’m sure I already know.”

“It’s sexier in French.” Sebastian closed his eyes, and throatily murmured, “ _On s’embrasse? T’embrasse moi, ma main, mes doigts … je t’aime, je t’aime_ …”

Sebastian was ten feet away but Blaine still felt the phantom press of fingers on the dips of his hips, hot lips against his ear. Warmth swept down his body, and Blaine grabbed the ends of his towel to anchor himself.

“I have no idea what you’re saying,” Blaine said. Sebastian’s eyes reopened with cat-like concentration, focusing on Blaine’s face.

“Yes you do.” Sebastian set the book away, swung his legs off the bed, stood up. Each move sent Blaine’s heart beating that much faster, th _ump_ -th _ump_ , Sebastian walking towards him in sure steps.

“I don’t … I don’t speak French …” Blaine flushed, dry mouth arousal tugging on his tongue and making it curl and press against the back of his teeth. He wanted to put his mouth -- somewhere. Sebastian wasn't smiling, but there was nothing unfriendly about the way he grasped Blaine’s arm, lifting it gently.

“Do you want me to teach you?” Sebastian kept his gaze locked on Blaine’s as he lifted Blaine’s arm. “Shall we kiss?” Blaine nodded stutteringly, and Sebastian ducked his head to press a kiss to the soft skin of Blaine’s arm. “Kiss me.” Another press of his lips, this time to the delicate stretch of skin over Blaine’s wrist, bordering on his hand. Blaine inhaled sharply. “My hand.” And then higher, Sebastian’s own elegant fingers and big hands sliding up to cradle Blaine’s, leaving slow, lingering kisses on Blaine’s trembling fingers. “My fingers.”

“I …” Blaine drew his gaze up from their entangled hands, up the strong line of Sebastian’s throat, darting his attention between the smattering of beauty marks, up to Sebastian’s own steady look. “We did that the wrong way around.”

“My mistake.” Sebastian laughed quietly, smile finally tugging at his mouth. “We can correct that, if you like.”

Blaine was tempted. Ninety years of scattered memories, and he didn’t remember ever feeling so tempted before. Something stuck out to him though, needling his side.

“But.” Blaine frowned. “You didn’t do the whole thing.” It was already slipping away, connections that frustratingly _wouldn't form_ in his mind, but he noticed that much. Sebastian’s smile lessened, but Blaine pushed on. “ _Je t’aime. Je t’aime._ ”

“Your pronunciation _blows_ ,” Sebastian winced, and when Blaine opened his mouth, he cut him Blaine off with a shake of his head. “I heard you. I just don’t know if you’re ready to hear _me_.”

Blaine linked their gazes and said,

“Tell me.”

“Je t’aime.” Sebastian repeated, and pulled Blaine’s hand to his chest, sounding almost exasperated. “I love you.”

“Oh.” Blaine dug his fingers into the soft fabric of Sebastian’s shirt, and laughed. Sebastian’s eyebrows shot up, and Blaine explained with apologetically, “I can’t imagine the Sebastian Smythe I know saying that. There’s so much I’m missing …”

This wasn’t a stranger in front of him, but so much about him was strange, and Blaine didn’t know how to reconcile the pounding of his heart with the uncertainty in his head.

“Hmph.” Sebastian started to step back, still holding onto Blaine and pulling him along until they hit the bed. The heat hadn’t left him, just redirected into something easier to gather into a warm press against his belly. “What happened, by the way? You’ve never forgotten before.”

“I don’t know.” Blaine kept digging his fingers into Sebastian’s shirt then smoothing over the marks, sure he could feel the jump of Sebastian’s heart underneath his fingertips. “One minute, there was a fire escape, and Kurt, and then.” He shrugged. “I wake up with the Writer.”

“The Writer?” Sebastian sat down heavily, then released his hold on Blaine’s hands to settle his grip onto Blaine’s hips, tugging him closer. He stared up at Blaine. “You’ve talked to him? He’s -- around?”

“In a pocket dimension.” Blaine brought his other hand up, splaying them across Sebastian’s chest.

“I always knew that bastard had to be somewhere …”

Sebastian trailed off as Blaine pushed him, firmly, down towards the bed. Sebastian cocked his head to the side but went, leaning back on his elbows and pulling himself back as Blaine lifted one knee up on the bed, then the other, straddling Sebastian as he continued to push him down.

“Blaine?”

“I remember,” Blaine said, settling across Sebastian’s hips, hands slipping down Sebastian’s torso. “More. When I’m with you.” Sebastian’s hands flexed on Blaine’s hips.

“What are you remembering right now?”

 _Kisses peppered around his collarbone like a necklace, hands curling around his wrists like bracelets, feeling very pretty and displayed. Sebastian touching his elbow, just so, a brief moment in a busy page, and how_ alive _Blaine felt afterwards._

“You. Just … you.”

Sebastian didn’t say anything more, just beckoned with his eyes and press of his fingers, until Blaine was bowing forward to kiss him.

\--

Kurt left the library bookless, ushered out at closing, only to head straight to a second-hand bookstore that was open late for a copy. The receipt pressed crisply between slightly off-white pages, 5.99 plus tax, a smiley face stamped onto the bottom.

He smoothed the receipt over and over again, staring down at the book. He didn’t want to read, but the loft was big and empty and all he had was this. An answer for what might have happened to Blaine.

Still, it would have been a lot easier if there was a Cliffnotes version, because then he wouldn’t have to read:

_“Shall we kiss? Kiss me, my hand, my fingers, I love you, I love you …”_

\--

Afterwards, Sebastian rolled over and buried his face in a pillow and presumably went to sleep, long arm and a leg outstretched and falling off the bed. Blaine curled up on his side and watched Sebastian’s slowly rising and falling back and its freckles, waiting for sleep, but it didn’t come. Instead there was:

_“You’re a sweet boy.” Sheila pinched his cheek, her wrinkles tugging up as she smiled. “Are you sure you don’t want more fritters?”_

_“I’m fine, thank you.”_

“Go to sleep. I can hear you thinking from here.”

Blaine started, looking over. Sebastian still wasn’t facing him.

“I can’t.” Blaine rolled onto his back, bringing his hands up, stretching them out. A pale band of early morning light fell across his fingers from the curtains they hadn’t quite closed. “I’m thinking about what you said.”

And this:

_“And you, Sebastian?” Sheila’s voice was chillier but she turned the plate toward him nonetheless._

“That I could come just from listening to you moan?”

“Not that.” Blaine laughed, swatting at him. “No, that I’m never alone. This isn’t the first time you’ve found me, is it?”

“No.” Sebastian finally flopped onto his back, squinting tiredly at Blaine. “I’m always there. Like StateFarm.”

“So you keep being brought back? Like me?”

“No. I’m not everyone’s best friend. I’m just …” Sebastian hummed. “Your shadow. Waiting for the second, third, thirtieth coming of you. Yay.”

“That’s …” Blaine laced his fingers together, letting them settle on his stomach. “How many times have I been engaged?”

“Four times.” Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Malia. Gregory. _Dick_. And surprisingly not named the same, Kurt.”

“He did have a nice one …” Blaine hid a grin.

“I’m sorry?” Sebastian raised his head. “You don’t remember the Nazi occupation of France or being arrested for peace protests against Vietnam but you remember that Hummel is hung?”

“I never said _that_.”

“Oh come on, his pants were tight enough.” Sebastian dropped his head with a groan. “Can we change the subject? I’m getting sick.”

“I have no control over what I remember.” Blaine rubbed his left hand. “But I remember enough. I never ended those relationships. They ended, but I didn’t end them, they didn’t end them. So is this --” he gestured between them. “-- okay?”

“Yes.”

“No offense, but you’re a little biased …”

Sebastian rubbed his eyes, then sat up, sheets pooling around his lap as he stared intently over at Blaine. “Look. You don’t remember. But you’d go crazy if you had to feel guilty about moving on. So you move on. And that’s okay.”

Blaine wasn’t sure about that. He remembered Kurt the most, but there were others, hints all strung together and he knew that he had to be in there somewhere. If he reflected the best wants and desires of all those people, didn’t that mean remembering them meant knowing himself? And in that case it seemed a betrayal to just -- move on. To himself, and them.

A familiar old guilt -- _At a strange house with a stranger’s taste in his mouth, a plane ride to New York where he tried to open a plastic package with trembling fingers and sent peanuts flying all down the aisle_ \-- hit him low in the gut and pushed out the lingering contentment from his orgasm.

“Shh. Still thinking too loud.” Sebastian tried to touch his shoulder but Blaine pulled away. He hadn’t been thinking of all those people when he’d climbed on top of Sebastian and unzipped his fly. Thoughtlessness was probably his only consistent trait.

“I’m going to go for a walk.” Blaine slid out of bed, going to the bag so he could pull on underwear and pants, tugging his shirt on as Sebastian sighed. “To clear my head.”

“I’m going back to sleep,” Sebastian said, shuffling behind Blaine as he got back under the sheets. “And later I’m going to go talk to that professor.” Blaine had explained that on their walk over, how it had pointed him to the skull. “In the meantime …”

“In the meantime?”

Blaine finally faced Sebastian again, finding him burrowing into his pillow again, the rosy amber of the light playing connect-the-dots in a golden streak across Sebastian’s pale, broad back. He was very cute, very handsome, _a hand touching his elbow briefly in a crowded room so anyone who cared to notice could tell that maybe, maybe_ \-- and Blaine softened.

“Read the book,” Sebastian said. “Finish it. It’ll help you understand.”

“Okay.”

Blaine grabbed a keycard off the dresser and went to go, stopped only by Sebastian’s comment of, “Take my sweater. The mornings are cold here.” And Blaine took Sebastian’s jumper out of hall closet, letting the long fall of material cradle him and allowing himself that comfort despite the guilty squirm to his stomach.

“Bye, Sebastian.”

Sebastian didn’t reply.

\--

Blaine came back around seven a.m. and fell asleep on the sofa, an extra blanket wrapped around him. He woke up to a cup of cold coffee on the table and a copy of _Monsieur Blaine_. The French version’s cover was of a Turkish bathhouse. Blaine figured that was coming up, and flipped through it, stopping on the front page: _Je t’aime_ , in a writing that had to be Sebastian’s. Smiling, he grabbed the English copy.

He ordered room service, fluffy scrambled eggs and bacon and toast. Blaine started reading as he ate, picking up where he left off (-- _Lovely Paris, in the springtime--_ ) while he absent-mindedly shovelled eggs into his mouth. He had new cup of coffee, then another, and he read, and read, and read.

He still wasn’t sure where he stood on sleeping with Sebastian. But it seemed to have unlocked something, and he wasn’t so reluctant to keep reading. As he read on --

A scene where Sebastian _kissed him like a tempest_ and the sparkling half-lights of Paris at night with _the twilight evening turning into the pitch-black of night as they, two gentlemen, walked out together_ and the growing, creeping unease of _the threat of invasion_. Blaine hadn’t known there was a plot past novel-Blaine coming to terms with his sexuality, but having been written in the late forties the Writer had told a story about the tensions of WWII in a soon to be Nazi occupied France, which he must have lived through.

Blaine could almost feel the tension of 1939 Paris, half-remember whispers about codebreakers and _bad weather’s the only reason we’re safe_ before he read them on the next page. As the novel neared its climax -- Sebastian grabbing his arm and saying _We must leave, unless you have plans to see the Fuhrer follow through on his promise_ \-- he had a pressing need for the washroom but couldn’t stop reading.

When novel-Blaine and Sebastian managed to slip their way out of France he finally took a break, making his third coffee of the morning. Sebastian was still missing, though it was nearing mid-afternoon, but Blaine figured he was being given space.

Coffee in hand Blaine settled down for the last ten pages of the book. He drank as quickly as he read, accidentally spilling some in a splattering drip onto some pages. He tried to wipe off the coffee stain but it only spread it, and he gave up, reading on.

Blaine and Sebastian were separated on their way to America. Novel-Blaine asked, and asked, if anyone knew the name of the ship Sebastian had taken, which port it could come into, but the country was being flooded with immigrants fleeing the war and Sebastian was just one man.

Blaine flipped to the last page with his heart in his throat and a washed out, clinging sadness wrapping itself around his organs. He knew what the last part would be, didn’t even need to read it, but he had always been a completionist (to his best knowledge). Still, it wasn’t worth the success of knowing.

 _It was a café in New York, its windows steamed-up around the posters which read Buy War Bonds! in high red letters._ _Blaine Anderson sat with a coffee and newspaper--and it was with chagrin that he closed the newspaper and set it down._

_“Can I take this chair?”_

_Blaine looked up, surprised. A girl stood there, wearing a neat-pressed gingham dress, and Blaine held silent._  
_“Sorry! Are you waiting for someone?” she asked._  
_“I am. I have been.” Blaine touched the join of coffee mug to table, where a ring was forming. “A very long time. I’ll wait longer.”_  
_“I’ll find another chair,” the girl compromised.  
_ _“No, I’m leaving.” Blaine stood up, coffee mug left half-drunk. The young girl was confused._

_“Aren’t you meeting a friend?”_

_“He’ll find me.” Blaine smiled as he put his hat on, tipping it to her. “Aurevoir.”_

_Blaine left the café and stepped out into the springtime of New York._

 

The book ended. Blaine didn’t feel complete.

\--

Sebastian didn’t return. There was being given space, and there was being avoided, and Blaine was starting to feel the latter one. Knowing how his and Sebastian’s story ended, and that they had been circling each other for decades now, it softened what they had done for him. Maybe it was something they both needed.

Blaine decided to go looking for Sebastian, leaving a message with the front desk in case his -- friend? lover? _fictional love interest?_ \-- got back ahead of him. Then he went to the only place he could think Sebastian might be: Cormier’s house. He walked there at a brisk pace, enjoying the day.

When he got there, however, his steps slowed. It was obvious something was wrong: a police car was sitting outside, and Cormier was at the front door, talking to a police man. Blaine peered at the car, but it didn’t look like Sebastian was in it. He hesitated. Should he just leave?

Cormier looked up, and spotted Blaine loitering a few houses down. His eyes narrowed. “Blaine!”

“Yes?” Blaine slowly approached, and if he’d felt odd peace at the graveyard, in this open street he could only feel alarm bells clanging against his breastbone. He eyed the cop. _Running would only be more suspicious_ , he told himself, except it also sounded like a woman’s voice so it was probably a memory.

“My house was broken into this morning,” Cormier said. The alarm bells nearly screeched.

“Is everyone okay?” Blaine asked, glancing up at the house. “Your daughter--?”

“They’re fine,” Cormier said brusquely. “But my case -- it was broken. And now my manuscript and original letters are gone.” Blaine winced. The cop was shifting, hand sliding down to his belt.

Blaine’s stomach twisted. What the hell had Sebastian done?

The policeman said something in French, and Cormier translated, jaw tight. “He says, you should come in with him, for questioning in the matter.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with this,” Blaine said as calmly as he could, slowly raising his hands. “Would I come back here if I had?”

“The gendarmerie will decide that,” Cormier said. “They are curious, as I am, as to why that manuscript has been safe for a decade now, but a day after you see it, it is gone.”

Blaine remained frozen, the voice still saying _Don’t run, don’t run_ , and he didn’t know if that was cowardice or common sense anymore but his feet still wouldn’t move. The cop came up and placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. Blaine nearly buckled, and he knew then, he’d have to let himself be taken. He couldn’t afford to get shot or beaten when he didn’t know how many tries at living again he had.

“I swear, I didn’t steal it,” Blaine tried weakly. Another cop appeared from the side of the house, tucking away a notepad. This one spoke English.

“Then this will go quickly.” He considered Blaine as his partner worked to restrain him. “I hope you have your passport, young American.”

That was when Blaine closed his eyes and wished for a magical intervention, but none came. He was bundled off into the police car and could only Cormier’s cold frown as they drove off, taking him to be interrogated in a country where he didn’t speak the language, and he’d illegally entered, and, well, _fuck_.

 _What good are you,_ he thought bitterly to the Madame, who must be watching somewhere.

(He could have sworn he heard a giggle, but maybe that was wishful thinking.)

_tbc_


	4. who is striving

As Blaine was seated in the police station to talk to a detective, he knew he had a very short amount of time before they realized he was in the country illegally. That, by all technicalities, he didn’t exist and if he had it was a very long time ago. So he opened with: “May I please have a phone call?”

“Why?”

Blaine hesitated. He wasn’t sure if that was a guarantee here. Hell, he wasn’t sure if it was a guarantee in America. That might just be on TV. He’d been arrested, protesting Vietnam, hadn’t he? He wasn’t sure if his fuzzy memories were from the ice in his head or whatever the hell he was on at the time.

“I need my passport. It’s at the hotel. My … friend can get it for me.”

The detective -- a very ordinary looking man, altogether -- considered him, then nodded. “You may use my phone.” He turned it around to face Blaine. “I will go get us something to drink.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Blaine watched him go, then picked up the phone. He paused, finger hovering over the dialpad. He didn’t actually know any numbers, did he? What was the one for the hotel? Did Sebastian mention a cellphone?

Then, abruptly, it came to him: 419-555-2391.

Blaine dialed, adding the appropriate numbers to dial out in front, and waited, drumming his fingers on the table. If this didn’t work, he was seriously screwed.

The phone picked up. Blaine’s breath caught.

“Hello?”

Blaine sagged in relief.

“ _Kurt_.”

\--

Kurt finished the book and didn’t know what else to do. So he knew now, that Blaine wasn’t real, his real name, that _Sebastian_ wasn’t real, that Kurt had gotten caught up in their games and he couldn’t decide _why_. Why him? What did he do to warrant being caught up in this scheming? Why would ‘Blaine’ and ‘Sebastian’ be taking cues from a decades old book? And -- even more horrible to consider, but Kurt had seen Blaine disappear -- what if they _were_ that decades old book? What if those were their real names, their real lives, and Kurt was just a footnote to their story?

He tried showing the book to Artie, mentioning it to Rachel and Santana and Mercedes, but they all brushed it off as coincidence. Asked why he was so worried about a guy he once dated. As if Blaine had been missing years, instead of only weeks. As if it wasn’t his fiancé who only now existed as dialogue and metaphors. The anger of the situation had filled him, making him scour Blaine's phone -- left, casually, on the coffee table -- for proof of Sebastian, of anything, only to end up hurling it against a wall in his sudden-white hot rage of how _unfair_ this all was.

Tina was the only one who took him seriously, but not as he expected. “Weird stuff like this, you leave that alone, Kurt.”

“But it’s _Blaine_.”

“Kurt …” she sighed. “Make yourself some tea, okay.”

What kind of advice was that? Make some tea? As if that could calm his racing mind, which was caught in an eternal playback of every moment he shared with Blaine. The holes that existed -- that he never _did_ meet Blaine’s parents, and how did you date someone four years and not know their parents? And Cooper --  his number was disconnected. Had he ever existed? The empty Anderson home, the empty Anderson life, and an empty Blaine in between?

He hadn’t felt empty in Kurt’s arms, in Kurt’s life. He had felt so real, warm in every way, smiles and elegant hands and mellow voice. How could that be faked?

Kurt couldn’t find any answers, the trail run cold to that damned book, and so he started to clean vigorously. He had lost track of things, the painful ordinary quality of everyday life, in his downwards spiral after Blaine disappeared. It was all misdirection of his anxiety (was Blaine loved, wherever he had gone? did he still sing?) but what else could he do?

He was cleaning out the oven when a phone rang.

A phone, not Kurt’s phone, but -- Blaine’s phone.

Despite the broken screen and the futility of it, Kurt had kept Blaine’s phone charged and on, in case any ransom demands or clues to Blaine’s whereabouts came through. And it was ringing, which it hadn’t done in weeks. It was like hearing someone speak through the dirt in a graveyard.

Kurt stripped off his rubber gloves and raced over to it, feet skidding across the floor and his hands shaking in his rush to pick it up. The number was an unknown international number but Kurt didn’t hesitate to hit answer.

“Hello?”

An exhale of relief.

“ _Kurt_.”

Kurt inhaled sharply.

“Blaine?”

“ _Yeah. How are you_?”

“How am I?” Kurt’s head spun, and he leaned against the wall, sliding down to the floor with a _thump_. “How am I? You’re the one who vanished!”

“ _I know_.” Blaine cleared his throat. “ _I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m fine. Well. Kind of_.”

“Kind of?” Kurt’s heart launched into his throat. Where the hell was Blaine?

“ _I’m_ \--” then, somebody speaking on the other end to Blaine. Kurt caught the words _international_ and _expensive_ and Blaine trying to argue back.

“Blaine? Blaine!”

“ _Kurt, I_ \--” there was a fumbling sound, and then abruptly, the dialtone. Kurt sat in silent shock for several long moments before he redialed the number, his shoulders crumpling as his call was immediately fielded. He tried, again, and again, and again, until whoever had stopped Blaine did something to guarantee a busy line.

Kurt tried to redial for nearly an hour, fingers white-knuckled around the phone, but soon the battery got too low and he had to concede defeat.

He did, however, note the phone number before he turned Blaine’s phone off.

A quick search later, and at least he knew this: Blaine was in Paris. Which didn’t make sense since his passport was still tucked next to Kurt’s in their underwear drawer, but nothing about his made sense. It was time to do something a little crazy.

Kurt got out their passports out, and started to pack.

\--

“Where were you, this morning?”

Blaine glared at the phone, hanging off the hook, then back up to Detective Foss. The man’s plain, weathered face stared back impassively.

“Sleeping.”

“At noon?”

“I went to bed late.” Blaine crossed his arms. “Around seven.”

“And you woke up?”

“Around one.” Blaine brightened. “Check with the hotel. I ordered room service.”

“And your hotel is?”

“The Concorde Opéra Paris.”

Detective Foss blinked. “That’s an expensive hotel, for a student.”

“I know people,” Blaine echoed. Where the hell _was_ Sebastian? Blaine needed to show him exactly how he felt about Sebastian getting him into this mess.

“People like this?” Detective Foss reached into a folder, then showed Blaine a sketch artist’s rendition of Sebastian.  The nose wasn’t right and the cheekbones not high enough, but it was recognizable, and Blaine’s recognition must have shown on his face. Foss smiled thinly. “The professor’s neighbour saw him watching the house, for a time.”

Blaine didn’t say anything.

“Do you know him?”

Blaine wasn’t sure if he was angry enough with Sebastian to sell him out to the police, but then again, it might get him out of here quicker. He was torn, but before he could start stalling, another cop appeared in the doorway of Foss’ office. She said something, and Foss leaned back.

“Your _avocate_ \-- lawyer, is here,” Foss told Blaine, who blinked. Was that Sebastian? There was something lawyerly about him, right? _My dad is sort of what you’d call a state’s attorney_ … Blaine sat up, as the cop left to bring in his lawyer.

Foss was watching him with a hawklike focus, and Blaine knew Sebastian shouldn’t walk in with that sketch on the desk. “Actually--”

“Quiet, Blaine.”

Blaine looked over to the door. That wasn’t Sebastian, but a woman with a square chin and dark hair that was twisted and curled back into a messy bun, wearing a suit. Her smile was crooked and very fierce.

“Mme. Bedel,” Foss greeted, and more must have followed but Blaine was kicked in the stomach by a memory that then grabbed his collar and yanked him down, forward, _somewhere_ , until all he could see was --

 _Blaine was wearing ripped jeans a simple shirt and jacket, the faint crispness of fall in the air. He could hear the sound of pounding feet around the corner, and the streets sang back_ Paris. _It was the third time he’d been back here since the Original Story, and he breathed it in as he leaned back against the wall. The footsteps were louder. 3 - 2 -1 - 0. Showtime._

_A girl burst around the corner, her hair whipping behind her, tangled up in her grey hoodie. She had a case of beer tucked in her arms, and she was running for all she was worth._

_Blaine stepped in front of her. “Don’t run.” He was speaking French, he knew, could hear the faint tinny words under his own, but it all sounded English to him. Like living in a well-dubbed movie._

_“Move it!” she snapped, trying to get around him, a desperate glance sent over her shoulder._

_“It looks more suspicious,” he told her. “And it’s a dead-end from here. Take off your jacket.”_

_“What?” She stopped, then looked past him, realizing he was right. She was going to spin around, but clearly heard the shouts coming their way. “Shit.”_

_“Quick,” he tugged on her jacket, and she locked eyes on him. “Trust me.” He saw it, when it clicked, where she sensed the things she didn’t know words for yet. Understanding. Blaine took off his own jacket as she did and then swapped; then, he placed the beer in a shallow alcove. There were footsteps accompanying the shouting now, coming closer. “We need to look busy.”_

_She hesitated, then grabbed his face and drew him into a heated kiss. Blaine wrapped his arms around her and deepened it, a flick of her tongue as she liked, and the footsteps paused at the mouth of the street before moving on._

_When they were safe, he pulled away and grinned. “Hi. I’m Blaine.”_

_“Élodie.” She stared at him in amazement. “Why did you help me?”_

_“I wanted to.”_

_“I stole that,” she said bluntly, pointing toward the beer. “Do you really want to get in trouble?”_

_“I don’t care.” Blaine shrugged, then said the words, the ones that were echoing in his head. The ones that she wished for, amidst two-faced friends and unreliable family, lost to herself and to others. “I trust you.” And with that he had her, and she had him. Blaine inclined his head to the beer. “If you want to make it up to me, we can go drink that in the park.”_

_She smiled, and agreed. Blaine felt it was cheating, how easy it was to get people to like him._

Blaine surfaced dreamily, for a second, watching Élodie lean against the desk and argue in rapid French with Detective Foss. He took a breath, then sank under again.

_Élodie was in her last year of lycée, high school. She was eighteen, and Blaine was accordingly a nineteen year old dropout. She liked talking to someone who didn’t prioritize school, which only made it easier for them to talk about it. Blaine told her about his educational experiences, pulling on real backgrounds he had, or as real as any of his former lives could be. He wanted to tell her more than the story that dominated the surface of his brain about home troubles and pulling a knife at school once, the fake truth he was living._

_He liked to be honest when he could, because he couldn’t be honest about the big things._

I’m not real. I’m just a fantasy. Caught in a landslide, and all that.

_So instead they talked school, and when he said he worked until her school let out, she started attending just to kill time before they met up. They spent their afternoons on petty theft and going to the Monoprix and eating food right off the shelves until they got chased out. She called him her best friend, and sometimes they just got high and made out on her narrow bed._

_He asked her what she wanted to do with her life, and she said -- she wanted to help people. He told her he wanted to make art, and she giggled, rolling over him and allowing her blue hair to fall down around his head as she kissed his nose._

_“Make art of me,” she said, hazily, warmly._

_“Only if you help me,” he returned with._

_He hung out around her school and smoked cigarettes and played at the rebellious boyfriend. They weren’t really dating, she wasn’t interested in that, but he could tell her about kids like him (_ like her) _who needed help. He voiced the thoughts she never could: she wanted to be trusted. She wanted to gain that trust._

_It didn’t always works, his attempts to reflect her. As time passed, he always got worse at it, as his own personality, his own life seeped in and crossed the wires. They fought, they didn’t see each other for days that Blaine spent with a local dog groomer he was friends with, and became his own person -- antsy and unsure. Sebastian wasn’t around, but it wasn’t possible for him to find Blaine, every life. So it was just him, watching Élodie grow._

_She went forward, bringing her grades up, applying to schools. She started to trust herself._

_Blaine was left drifting behind, waiting for the day she woke up and didn’t think of him. Didn’t need him._

_And when that day came, he_ \--

“You’re free.”

Blaine looked up, dazedly, at Élodie. She smirked. “They will leave you alone now. We checked your alibi, and the hotel confirmed Sebastian Smythe’s as well.”

“I can go?” Blaine looked around. Detective Foss was gone. How long had he sat there, staring blankly at nothing? He was surprised they didn’t call an ambulance.

Élodie nodded. “I was surprised to see you here, I was helping another client. You used to be better at avoiding trouble.”

“That was another me …” Blaine muttered, standing up and rolling his shoulders to relax them, relief warming his spine. He looked to Élodie, who looked to be in her early thirties, but by his math based off all the Tears for Fears he remembered listening to with her, she must be in her forties by now. And there was Blaine, still able to pass for a high school student. Yet Élodie was unconcerned. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“I’ve experienced stranger things.” She mimed hitting a blunt, and Blaine laughed. “I always knew there was something about you, Blaine.”

Blaine left her by stepping into a river, the muck squirming up his calves and the water sliming its way down his throat. He was always gone before he died, but performing the act of death made it easier for them to comprehend him leaving. She hadn’t been there, he didn’t like them to see -- his mind flitted to Kurt, on the other end of that phone -- but she would have known that he was gone.

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” he told her. “But … thank you.”

“We can talk. Coffee.” Élodie linked arms with him, steering him toward the door. “Consider it payment for my services.”

“Alright.”

\--

Kurt was finished packing and had booked his ticket to Paris, bearing it bravely as his bank account was severely depleted. The last thing he put in his suitcase before zipping it up was _Monsieur Blaine_ , resentfully staring down at the benign pastel cover. His flight was tomorrow, but he wanted to leave for the airport then, unable to handle just sitting still. He could sleep in the departures lounge and pretend it was the arrivals, Blaine on a flight in from Ohio.

A knock on the loft door startled him out of his thoughts. Kurt went to open it, and found Tina on the other side.

“Hey Kurt.” She brushed past him, dragging a suitcase behind her. “Can I use your bathroom? The one on the bus was seriously funky.”

“What are you …” Kurt stared after her as she marched into his bathroom without further ado. He looked down at her suitcase. It looked stuffed. He waited impatiently until the water ran and Tina emerged, humming to herself. “This isn’t a good time to visit, Tina. I’m about to go abroad.”

“But it’s my spring break!” She threw her hands up in the air. “I thought you’d be the one friend free. Quinn has this lesbian art show in L.A. to go to and Sam is in _Lima_ , and seriously, let’s do something!”

“I’m going after Blaine,” Kurt said, hands settling on his hips. He wasn’t sure what to make of Tina most of the time, but she was straight-up asking to be kicked out. “Remember? My missing fiancé? Your best friend?”

“Who went all Carmen Sandiego on us?” Tina shot back.

“He called me,” Kurt said. “He’s in trouble, in Paris. I think legal trouble. He called from a police station.”

“Okay, so he went all _The Hangover_ on us.” Tina crossed her arms. “Do you really think we should go chasing after him? He ran away, remember.”

“He didn’t!” Kurt snapped. “You weren’t there, you have _no_ idea what you’re talking about. He -- he loves me. And I love him. I’m going to show him that’s enough.”

Tina glared back, and Kurt tensed, preparing for more. If he had a clock that ticked, it would have counted loudly right then: tick. tick. tick. He didn’t, though, and measured the silence in each angry little breath he took in and released.

Then she shrugged, and said, “Okay, I’ll come with you.”

“What?”

“I’m already packed,” Tina gestured to her suitcase. “I’ll buy the ticket right now. I’ve been saving up birthday money.”

“I don’t know …”

“Hey!” Tina smiled, eyebrows arching. “You’re not the only one who loves Blaine.”

Kurt had to concede her that. “Okay. You can use my laptop. The flight is tomorrow morning.”

“Great! Time to do a little sightseeing in New York first.” Tina beamed. “Have you been up the Statue of Liberty yet?”

Kurt stared back helplessly.

\--

Blaine and Élodie were in a little café where the tables were decorated with mosaic patterns of spiky suns and curving moons, the chairs curling black ironwork. They got a table outside, the later afternoon spring sun warm and the air surprisingly fresh for the city centre. Élodie pointed towards the art gallery that was opposite.

“My lady works there.”

“Your ...” Blaine blinked. “You have a girlfriend?”

“Oui.” The harsh lines of her cheekbones and jaw softened as she smiled, and her dark eyes glittered happily. “Her name is Beth. She moved here from London, so my English has gotten much better. I had to know how to tell her dirty things.” She winked.

“That’s sweet,” Blaine told her. “And helpful. I’m afraid I don’t speak much French.”

“But --” Élodie looked around, but the terrace was half-empty. “You did in 1989. Does this have something to do with that book? The one named after you?”

Blaine spluttered on his coffee. “You’ve read it?”

“I was trying to find you online, years later.” She drummed her fingers on the table. “Imagine my surprise to see you had a book. A very -- ah -- _enlightening_ one.” Her eyebrows were dancing, the innuendo clear.

“I’d like to point out I didn’t _write_ it,” Blaine said. He hadn’t struggled through the sex scenes in the book -- though risqué, they were 1940s risqué, and considering the live re-enactment he’d gotten just last night, it being with Sebastian wasn’t that shocking. Mostly, he’d marvelled at the strangeness of seeing thoughts and actions attributed to him that he couldn’t remember.

“That’s what you think. It’s anonymous, _non_? I read up on it online. They say there was a real Blaine.”

“But he died before the book was written. The writer mentions it in his letters.”

“Maybe the letters _aren’t_ from the writer, just a friend who knew the real writer: Blaine.”

“Isn’t a little egotistical to write a whole book about yourself being the new hit of Paris and swept off your feet because you’re the perfect man?”

“So now you say you don’t have an ego?” Élodie pressed a hand to her heart. “You really are a different man, Blaine.”

Blaine laughed quietly, taking a sip of his coffee. He considered her, her expression fond and open, and the trust was still there. He could feel it like he could feel the heat of the coffee against his palms, and the reassuring contact of her gaze. It had been over twenty years, but still …

“Have I changed too much?”

“No!” Élodie shook her head, hair loosening from its bun. “I still see you, in there. You’ve started following the law and dressing better, that is all. Which is what _I_ did too, so.” She shrugged. “We all grow up.”

“But I don’t.” Blaine put his coffee down and leaned forward. “It’s hard to explain, but basically, I keep being -- reset. To be there for people, like I was there for you. And I don’t age, I don’t get to be myself, I just _change_. To what they need. I don’t know myself.”

“Why do you say that like it’s strange?” Élodie pointed to the gallery. “I hated sushi, until I met Beth. She made me like it. When you know people, you allow them into your heart, and they leave things behind because man is a messy creature. But you allow it, because that’s living.”

“That’s …” Blaine thought it over. “The most comforting thing I’ve heard yet.”

“I know. I am good.” Élodie smiled, and reached over, squeezing Blaine’s hand. “So please stop looking like a raincloud.”

“I still have some problems.” Blaine turned his hand over, lacing their fingers together. She had a strong grip, callused fingers, bony knuckles. “I want more freedom. My own path. But …”

“But?”

“Do you remember when you said you wanted to help people?”

“No,” Élodie said. “But I _would_ say it. Go ahead.”

“I want that too. And I’m starting to wonder …” he looked to their joined hands. Two decades ago, those knuckled had been scabbed because of the fights she’d get into. “I helped you. And Kurt, and Aleksandros, and Nadia, and Angie, and Thomas … I don’t know all their names, but I helped them. And I could go on helping them.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m trying to find some things right now, to make myself -- real. I’d stop this cycle.” Blaine bit his lip. “Is that selfish?”

“ _Non, non_.” She brought her other hand over, cradling his. “You want to go crazy? You will, if you already want out, and then you keep going. It is more important to be happy. Because happy and alive, you can still help people.”

“But not the way I do now.”

“By being people’s friends?” She tilted her head to the side. “We mortal humans do that fine. And you can keep finding new ways to help people. _More_ ways.”

“I could become a doctor,” Blaine suggested, a hug of a memory coming to him, the bright purple of Kurt’s shirt and the reassurance of his arms.

“You could do anything,” Élodie smiled. “We all help each other, every day. It took me very long to see it, but once I did -- it’s everywhere. It’s the only way we keep going. That -- and Netflix.”

“That’s true.”

Blaine was wondering if Élodie could be persuaded to join him for the rest of his quest -- it hit him in that moment, in a way as easy as helping an old partner out of their coat, that he loved her. He loved her as surely as he’d ever loved anyone else, and he had the memories to reinforce _why_. She was brave and energetic and wild, and so determined to care. She held his hand, and she didn’t seem to need more.

He wondered if she had, though.

“And you don’t resent me for not helping you longer?” Blaine asked abruptly.

“What?” Élodie’s strict eyebrows furrowed. “Why would I?”

“If you still needed me …”

“ _Merde_ , I didn’t need you. Of course I _missed_ you. But I also miss my baby blanket. I don’t need it, now. I found new things to hold onto.”

_I need some shelter of my own protection, baby  
To be with myself and center clarity, peace, serenity_

A stage in Ohio, Rachel Berry, a certainty of a star and friend, Kurt’s legs in tight mustard yellow. Blaine didn’t let himself be drawn further in, focusing on Élodie and the present.

“I’m glad,” he told her, and meant it, even if a nostalgic overcast came over him. With all his own worries about being able to move on, he wondered why it bothered him to imagine others moving on from _him_. Maybe that was his selfishness, an inherent core to Blaine that couldn't be taken away. Maybe that was his messy humanity, shining through.

“But I will always love you,” she told him, then paused. “That song is _terrible_. We should have never colonized Canada.”

Blaine laughed, and his free hand came over to complete their duo-hand holding. “And I love you, Élodie.”

“Shh,” Élodie grinned. “My lover might hear us.” She nodded across the street, and Blaine saw a petite woman with a long fall of dark hair exiting the gallery. Élodie made him jump by shouting, “BETH!”

Beth looked up, grinning widely, and darted out between the street -- making a car screech to a halt to spare her -- and came up to them with a wiggle to her step. “I thought you had work!”

“Took my client out.” Élodie lifted their joined hands. “This is Blaine Anderson, a thief.”

“Hey!”

“Beth Patel. It’s lovely to meet you, Blaine,” Beth said, holding out a hand to shake. Blaine freed his hands and did so, not offended to note that Beth’s attention didn’t stay on him for long. This was a living, satisfying epilogue in front of him, the contentment that swept across Élodie’s face as Beth bowed forward to kiss her. Blaine set aside the idea of Élodie travelling with him then; it was time to do some moving on of his own.

“I have to get back to the hotel,” Blaine said, getting up with his coffee and gesturing for Beth to take his seat. “Thank you so much for everything, Élodie.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Élodie replied, then held up a finger. “Wait a moment.” A second later she had a small notebook out, and scribbled out a number, tearing the page out to hand to him. “Here. So we don’t lose touch again. Call me.”

Blaine took it, feeling his own contentment as he carefully tucked it away in his pocket. “I will,” Blaine promised. Beth looked between them, curious, and Blaine smiled at her. “Have a nice day.”

“Find yourself a nice life,” Élodie shot back. Blaine inclined his head in agreement, and left, a new bounce to his step. He had one item. The manuscript and letters might potentially point to another, if Sebastian did have them. He could have that life before the week was up, if he kept going at this pace.

It was time to start thinking more positively.

\--

Sebastian wasn’t at the hotel, and Blaine decided to indulge, ordering up some champagne and a burger for dinner. Twilight was falling outside when he finished the burger, and then he dragged one of the ivory chairs up to the French doors that led out to the small balcony, propping his feet up on the bottom rail as he drank and watched people walk around down on the streets below.

How to help people _without_ being a mystical reincarnating picture-perfect boyfriend?

Blaine giggled to himself, sliding further down in the chair and wiggling his bare toes. This really was a nice room. Maybe there was something to be said for ostentatiousness. The click of the door drew him out of the half-bottle of champagne left, and Blaine pushed himself up and peered over the edge of the chair to see Sebastian entering the bedroom.

“Hi,” Blaine said breathlessly.

“So you _are_ alive. I was starting to wonder.” Sebastian approached, tall body angled over the top of the chair so he could examine Blaine’s setup. “Starting without me? I’m so proud.” He reached for the bottle.

“Get your own,” Blaine told him, yanking it away. “I’m not sharing with you.”

“Uh-oh. _Somebody’s_ an angry drunk.” Sebastian laughed, and Blaine turned around fully so he could sit up on his knees, bringing him nearer to Sebastian’s eye level.

“I am angry _period_.” Blaine squinted in annoyance. “Guess who got arrested today?”

“Judging by your mood …” Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Katy Perry, for crimes against music?”

Blaine stared blankly.

“Trust me, if you didn’t have amnesia, that would be _hilarious_.”

“ _I’m_ the one who got arrested,” Blaine placed the bottle down between his knees so he could poke Sebastian in the shoulder. “Detained. Whatever.”

“Awesome. What did you do?”

“Made the mistake of worrying about you,” Blaine said. “I went to Cormier’s house and his manuscript and letters were missing, and he blamed _me_.”

“Oh, come on.” Sebastian held his hands up. “I swear, I stood outside that place for ages so Mrs Dursley next door would blame me. But maybe she was just checking me out. It happens.”

“So you admit it. You stole them.”

“Who else would want them?” Sebastian paused. “Though I only took the manuscript. I have no idea what letters you’re talking about.”

Blaine cast his mind back through a near century worth’s of muddled memories to get back to yesterday, and realized that he never had told Sebastian about his interest in the letters. So that was another mystery.

“My lawyer said you had an alibi.”

“Because I know how to pull off a good heist.” Sebastian looked smugger than usual, and Blaine rolled his eyes in return. “Admit it. You think that’s hot.”

“I _think_ I could have started an international incident, and you were off doing god knows what all day.”

“I do have business in the city.”

“Well finish it or stay behind, because I’m going.”

“Going … where?”

“Mulhouse.” Blaine crossed his arms on the top of the chair and let his chin drop on them. The day’s excitement was starting to catch up with him, despite his late wake-up. “It came up a lot in the letters. It might be important.”

“That’s pretty far to go for a ‘might’.”

“I _also_ want to get out of the city in case the police see through your master heist skills.”

“Now that’s a good point.” Sebastian nodded. “We’ll check out tomorrow then catch a train.”

“Okay.”

“So do you want to see it?”

Blaine blinked blearily. “See what? Are you propositioning me again?”

“I’m always propositioning you,” Sebastian replied smarmily, snickering when Blaine reached out to lightly slap his arm. “No, the manuscript. It’s in the desk with the skull.” (Which was tucked out of sight in order to spare house cleaning a deadly fright.)

“Not tonight.” Blaine covered a yawn. “I’m about to crash.”

“Then you can shower first.” Sebastian stepped away. “I’ve got to make some phone calls.”

Blaine hummed, and after Sebastian left (already snapping at someone in German on his phone) he took a quick shower, brushed his teeth, pulled on his pyjamas, and settled into bed with full intention of sleeping all night. He drifted off while listening to the evening wind down through the still-open balcony doors, and only briefly woke up a few hours later when Sebastian slid into bed next to him.

“‘Night,” he tried to mumble, but he wasn’t sure he actually said anything

He slept peacefully, without dreams or memories.

_tbc_


	5. for understanding

They caught a late morning train to Mulhouse, snagging first-class seating because Sebastian declared “I’d rather cut my legs off then go coach” and Blaine could remember enough of the cramped, armrest-free seating in the cheap seats to agree. Sebastian also spoke at length with somebody until they managed a private compartment. It brought Blaine back to sometime in Chicago, Sebastian haggling with a mobster over retail space.

Once they were seated and the train underway, they had a few hours travel ahead of them -- “And bound to be full of delays” -- so they agreed to pull out the manuscript. (The skull was kept cozy in Sebastian’s luggage, which he had gotten from his “apartment,” wherever that was.) The finished book was roughly one hundred and twenty pages long. The manuscript seemed about the same, though written on larger foolscap pages. It was also in French.

“I’ll read it to you,” Sebastian said, and Blaine shrugged, settling into his seat. Sebastian cleared his throat, picked it up, and began. Blaine closed his eyes as he listened to Sebastian’s easy tenor. Combined with the train rocking underneath him ( _Aleksandros had been a fisherman, and Blaine had helped keep him in the black when he was about to lose his business_ ) Blaine was at ease.

The manuscript wasn’t that different. It must have been a final draft. Blaine noticed a few word changes, some scenes jumbled out of order, but the plot was the exact same. Sebastian got into it with the familiarity, even going to the point of doing voices. Blaine huffed in laughter at that, and Sebastian nudged him with his knee, the grin entering his voice.

“ _The crystal chandelier crashed to the floor and they ran as mice do, scurry-quick_ …”

Things got more sombre as they moved on. Blaine wondered at the faint tremble of emotion he caught in Sebastian’s voice at _“We must take separate boats_ …” but it was gone as quickly as it came. He kept feeling wrong-footed, not in a bad way, but thrown off by how Sebastian clearly trusted and loved him deeply, even if Blaine wasn’t the usual Blaine who occupied Sebastian’s attention. And he wondered at that -- he could remember more and more of their time together, _when_ they had found each other, and he knew he loved and trusted Sebastian in turn. But -- he’d never been pushed to pursue it further, always ranking priority in his person of that lifetime. How much of that was Blaine not needing more, not needing to be defined by the book’s wishes for him, and how much was Blaine being defined by the universe’s wishes for him?

It seemed last time, Ohio, Kurt, things had gotten uglier between them. Blaine could almost feel the phantom sting to his eye now. That had surprised him, _upset_ him, a betrayal that went back further than the glee club could ever imagine. And Kurt, and betrayal. Why had Blaine cheated? Did he think his time was over? Or, like Sebastian’s own lashing out, had it been a sign of how their confusing web was unravelling? That Blaine would wake up soon and not know who he was but know who he was wanted more than that?

If only the Madame was chattier on cosmic secrets. She must know what had happened, and why.

After a short break, with their stop rapidly approaching, Sebastian got to the last chapter. Blaine refocused his attention, especially when Sebastian paused mid-page flip.

“There’s an extra chapter.”

“What?” Blaine’s eyes opened. “But you were right at the end.” It had been Blaine, searching for Sebastian. The scene in the café was next.

“That’s what I’m saying. There’s an extra chapter.” Sebastian showed Blaine, and sure enough, an extra few pages were tied to the rest, titled CHAPITRE 13. Blaine leaned forward, scanning it in disbelief. If life with Élodie had been dubbed over, this was (almost) subtitled. The words were still in French but Blaine could understand, and:

 _A cough, from the chest, interrupted the classroom that day_.

Then everything went black, and Blaine had time to dizzily wonder if they were in a tunnel before the blackness stopped his thoughts, too.

\--

Blaine dragged himself back to consciousness by the tips of his fingernails, arms trembling and eyes squeezed shut as he tried to right the equilibrium sent spinning inside him. The train was still moving smoothly but Blaine felt like he’d been tossed on a roller-coaster. Upside down and blindfolded. Finally, with a pained groan, he reopened his eyes to their cabin.

“Welcome back, sleeping beauty.”

Blaine jumped, looking up to see A, the Writer, sitting there. Sebastian was nowhere to be found, and Blaine was lying on the ground. With another, longer groan to really accentuate how much he didn’t like this, he pulled himself up and sat back in his chair.

“What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t supposed to read that, Blaine.”

“Read what?” Blaine rubbed his head and spotted the manuscript just as he said it, feeling a bit stupid. “Oh, that. Why not?”

“You weren’t supposed to know about it.” The Writer shrank in on himself, shoulders pulling in like a bird huddling in itself for warmth. The stare he sent to Blaine was pure talons, though, sharp and pinning him back into the chair cushion. “You never should have seen it.”

“I’m sorry?” Blaine side-eyed the Writer, angling his body away from the uncomfortable stare. Why wasn’t he meant to have read what was just the book? And ... “Where’s Sebastian?”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.” Blaine folded his arms. “He read the manuscript too.”

“Not the manuscript.” The Writer shook his head rapidly, jumping to his feet. He was a tall man, but scarecrow-skinny, and he filled the cabin like a falling tree -- _I saw the branches of it looking at me_ \-- and Blaine shook that away, because he couldn’t afford to slip away now. “The chapter, the ending, the _real_ ending …”

Blaine remembered now: _A cough, from the chest, interrupted the classroom that day_. Was that all? He drew his feet up as the Writer began to pace an anxious dance back-and-forth across the cabin.

“The real ending is the café. That’s the one that’s published.”

“Because I liked that ending better. Henri made me write the other one.” The Writer turned on Blaine, eyes white all around the iris. “It’s a stupid truth, Blaine. I never wanted you to …” he broke off, spinning so he could stare out the window and start rapidly muttering to himself. Blaine slowly, carefully, got to his feet and put his back to the door.

“Why not? It’s my story.”

The Writer froze, and in inchworm increments his hands started to climb the window, pushing on the glass like he was testing its resistance. In a shaky voice he said, “It shouldn’t have been your story.”

Blaine wanted to place a reassuring hand on the Writer’s bowed shoulders, but he was uncertain on how it would be received. “I didn’t read the whole thing. Just the first line.”

“It doesn’t matter. Once it starts, it can’t stop.” The Writer tipped his forehead to the glass.

“What starts?”

“The end.” The Writer made an odd, choked-off sound, and Blaine gave in, coming over to place a gentle hand on one of the trembling shoulders. The Writer slowly evened his shaking body out, and then abruptly he was spinning around and knocking Blaine’s hand away. Blaine stepped back and watched him carefully. The Writer smiled thinly, head cocking to the side, and it really was a familiar gesture --

\-- _straddling Sebastian as he continued to push him down--_

\-- and Blaine got it. His eyes darted over the face -- previously unremarkable -- and took in the green tensely watching him and the freckles. They were far from twins but … “Sebastian. You’re Sebastian.”

“No.” The Writer’s lips thinned.

“I was real, so Sebastian was real too -- you’re Sebastian.” Blaine thought of those fragile baby bird hands; the Writer had tried to follow him beyond the grave and straight into the book.

“ _No!_ ” The Writer pointed to himself. “He’s me. But I am not him.”

“So he’s our self-insert. Because your friend died and you wanted to _fuck_ him, and -- that’s what you did.” Blaine took a step back.

“He wasn’t my _friend_.” The Writer exhaled in a controlled gust, then pointed to the chairs. “Sit. I’ll explain.”

Blaine remained standing as the Writer flopped down, maintaining what little control he’d ever had under this man’s thumb. Sebastian had doggedly pursued him for years, and it was just a reflection of the Writer’s futile desires. Blaine was starting to understand why he’d held off.

“Or stand, whatever.” The Writer held up a sheaf of papers he’d pulled from only Tina knew where. “Recognize these?” He turned them around so Blaine could see the spiky, loose handwriting.

“The letters,” Blaine realized. “You stole them.”

“They were mine to begin with.” The Writer waved the papers into an annoyed _snap_. “These are all my secrets, and you and that Cormier were too close to realizing.”

“What do they say?” Blaine sat down, curiosity overriding his pride.

“That you weren’t just my muse.” The Writer stared down. “That I didn’t start writing the book until after you died. That it’s not a manifesto. That it’s a tribute. Things I don’t want made real or known.” He glanced back up, jaw twitching. “But I trust you. I made you to trust.”

Blaine laced his fingers together and propped his elbows up on his knees, leaning forward to stare at the French, code, and music notes. He was starting to see their meaning.

“You loved …” Blaine hesitated. “Him.” It wasn’t _me_.

“I did.” The Writer handed Blaine the letters, taking a slow breath. “My name is Ancelin.”

Ancelin. “That’s a nice name,” Blaine said, and the Writer laughed tightly.

“That’s what he said, when we first met,” Ancelin said, voice spreading out softly. “He was a stage singer, under the name Devon.” Blaine looked down at the letters. _Devon_ was written throughout -- he’d just assumed it meant the English county where he’d helped a new mother named Agatha give birth. The context of the sentences must have been misleading. “He was perfect. I didn’t believe in perfection, but that’s what he was.”

“Because you loved him.” Blaine didn’t think he could aim for _perfect_ in a real life, too. There had to be some allowances for the human weaknesses he was seeking.

“Because I loved him,” Ancelin agreed. “He could get too jealous, and so self-focused, and he’d retreat so far in himself and I couldn’t do anything but try and make him smile.” Ancelin watched Blaine’s mouth and said, “He had the nicest smile.”

“What happened?”

“Tuberculosis,” Ancelin said. “The antibiotics were only just becoming available, and hard to get as we cleaned up from the War, and he didn’t want to go into a sanatorium. He was so afraid of leaving me. And then …”

Blaine Anderson

1919-1946

_Requiescat In Pace_

Blaine blinked the image away and said, “I’m sorry.” To see someone you love survive an occupation but not an illness ...

“What is there to apologize for? It was random and ugly and …” Ancelin sighed. “I didn’t see much point in living after that, but Henri, he told me to write. So I did, and I did my best to make him live again.”

“By having them -- us -- go to America?”

“The occupation was hard on everyone,” Ancelin explained. “And he was so paranoid, that the Nazis would learn his about his mother, because there were so many whispers … and then the Japanese invaded the Philippines, all while their boats lurked around Scotland, where his family was ..” off Blaine’s look, he added, “His father was Scottish-American, and escaped the draft for the first War by going to his mother’s family, with his wife. Devon was born soon after they came and they didn’t have papers, so they didn’t get him a birth certificate. He used to say if the Nazis got him, nobody would have proof he existed.”

That explained why Blaine Anderson had been so hard to find.

“I thought all the stress -- it did something to him. Made it harder for him to fight off the infection. I could only watch him flake away …” Ancelin shrugged. “And America was a place of hope. No Hitler. No starving winters.”

“The great dream.”

“Yes.” Ancelin showered Blaine the papers. “Henri was the only one who knew the story of Sebastian and Blaine was really Ancelin and Devon, because he watched us live it. He was a good friend, but I wish he’d burned these completely.”

“Why do you want them hidden?” Blaine asked. “I know, back in the fifties, you might not want anyone to know you were gay but now …”

“Because I wrote that story for him to live. It ruins it, if people know he died.”

Blaine thought of the offerings at Devon’s grave, tokens from people who must have done their research and known his connection to the story; it didn’t seem ruined to him. But Ancelin’s gaze was sure as he neatly folded the letters, which disappeared as he turned them over, leaving only his pale, empty hands.

“I think he lives no matter what,” Blaine told him. “Not just in me. But -- you carry him with you.” He thought of Élodie’s hands, and how they had held him surely. “He’ll always be with you.”

Ancelin smiled sadly. “If only he was with me in a world where I could hold him.”

Blaine had nothing to say to that, and when he blinked, the Writer was gone and Sebastian was shaking him.

“What the hell was that?” Sebastian asked. “You just passed out --”

“The Writer.” Blaine gently pushed Sebastian away, and he fell back into his seat with a roll of his eyes. Blaine suspected there was no love lost between those two. “He doesn’t want me to read the manuscript.”

“So?” Sebastian spoke up to ceiling. “You’re not our big bad daddy, asshole. Go away.”

“I agree with him,” Blaine said, picking the manuscript up from Sebastian had dropped it, closing it carefully. He thought of the Writer’s panic, and his own unease returned. He wasn’t sure he wanted to learn what had started. “We don’t need to know.”

“That’s bullshit,” Sebastian said. “Don’t let him into your head.”

How many things had Blaine thought that came straight from Ancelin’s pen? He couldn’t count them, but he could recognize the distinctive penmanship. This was his choice.

“Let’s leave it,” Blaine said firmly.

“Fine.” Sebastian shook his head.

“Promise me you won’t read it, Sebastian.”

Sebastian held out a long moment, then muttered, “I promise.”

They were silent for the rest of the trip.

\--

They ended up checking into a small hotel, the silence thawing as they took the opportunity to laugh at the hideous artwork up on the walls of the narrow banisters. Blaine had suggested they not go for something as obvious as the Hilton, in case the gendarmerie came knocking. So they were in what was definitely _not_ the nicest place in town, but had a convenient fire escape right by their room.

Blaine placed the skull and manuscript together, and they passed their afternoon sightseeing and getting a late lunch. Sebastian confirmed to Blaine that the Alsace region, and Mulhouse, had been occupied during the War -- “annexed, really” -- but Blaine wasn’t yet sure of what connection it had to Blaine “Devon” Anderson.

That evening they went back to the hotel room with some beers and a plan to see what TV they could get on the grainy old television before maybe checking out the nightlife. “Not that I think this place has one,” Sebastian said. When they were settled in there, Blaine looked around their room and saw they didn’t have a mini fridge, and he wasn’t up to drink lukewarm beer. He did, however, spot a silver ice bucket in need of a polishing.

“I’m getting ice.” Blaine picked up the bucket. He was pretty sure he’d seen an ancient white cooler while they were coming upstairs.

“I’m so hot you need to cool down?” Sebastian waggled his eyebrows from where he was trying to get rid of the green cast the screen had. Blaine snorted and left, shutting the door behind him and padding down the carpeted hallway. The wallpaper in this place was hideous, and Blaine was pretty sure he’d get seasick looking at it, so he familiarized himself with the shape of his toes instead.

Whistling _Everybody Wants to Rule The World_ , Blaine turned the corner, crossing down past dark wooden doors and the dusty wall sconces. At the icebox, he slid open the top and stooped to start shoveling ice into his bucket.

“Champagne waiting in the room?”

Blaine yelped, banging his elbow against the icebox as he raised his head sharply. Standing there was Tina. Or, not Tina. The Madame, wearing a slinky black cotton dress with a stylized white sun on the front. The design pricked familiarly.

“Beer … what are you doing here? Is something the matter?”

“Kurt’s on his way,” Tina examined her nails. “He’s up in the air, but he’s coming. Just to give you a timeframe, since you only have one more to go.”

“One more?” Blaine only had the skull and the manuscript. “Is the manuscript one? What is it?”

“You want me to take the fun out of it!” Tina shook her finger at him. “Oh no, Mr. Anderson. Bad boy. You’ll learn on your own.”

Blaine was ready to argue that but he blinked and then Tina was gone. Sighing, he collected the rest of his ice and returned to the room. He and Sebastian could work it out. Honest Love, or his Soul. What could be bound up in paper? His soul, because it was where he was conceived? It made sense.

Sebastian wasn’t in the room, nor in the bathroom. Blaine put the ice away and threw himself onto the bed, head tilting to the side so he could consider Sebastian’s half of it. The screen was no longer green, and he didn’t remember that bag of chips. Had Sebastian gone shopping? He hadn’t been gone that long, had he?

He rolled over to look at the bedside clock. It was a half hour later then he remembered. Blaine groaned. He was _seriously_ looking forward to magic being out of his life.

His attention strayed to the manuscript and skull. He blinked. That wasn’t how Blaine had left them. The manuscript was at an angle, coy, and Blaine had a bad feeling.

Sebastian had broken their promise.

Blaine got up, heading over so he could pick it up. The cover was askew, a tie broken on the side that hadn’t been when he’d put it down. Sebastian must have thrown it back. Must not have liked whatever he saw, and Blaine’s throat went dry. He was angry, and it hit him hard and low in the gut. This was why he didn’t want it read, this was why --

“God _damit_.” Blaine threw the manuscript onto the bed, and it flopped open with what must have been supernatural accuracy, right on the last chapter. The _real_ last chapter.

He wavered. Tina must have wanted it read, and she _was_ trying to help him. It couldn’t be so bad.

Blaine stared at it, and remembered Chicago and a mob heiress, the perfect bodyguard, left choking in his own blood on the ground after he took a bullet for her. The delicate spray of her hands against his chest, soaking up the blood and leaving childish handprints on his face as she gripped it and begged him not to go. Dying like that, for someone, had been an easy choice. Was that bravery?

Or was it the Blaine he had just been, the one who learned to look in the mirror and reassure himself that it wasn’t cowardice, leaving behind a bad situation. Little affirmations as he filled up the holes in Kurt’s high school creation. If he could be that boy, those men, all those different versions of himself and somehow end up here striving to change it -- he could read this book.

So Blaine sat down and read.

\--

Charles de Gaulle Airport was bustling when they landed, and Kurt only held his patience through customs knowing that the last thing he needed was to be locked in a cell while Blaine was being interrogated by the _gendarmerie_.

“The purpose for your visit?” Asked the clerk, as she stamped Kurt’s passport.

“Shopping,” Kurt dryly replied. She took one look at his faintly glimmering vest then nodded, handing his passport back.

“Welcome to Paris.”

Kurt could have sworn Tina had been behind him in the customs line, but when he exited out to the main terminal he found her reading a magazine, her feet up on their luggage.

“Tina!”

“Kurt.” She smiled at him, standing up and arranging her black dress. It struck Kurt a little, all of sudden, that it had been ages since Tina wore black. His attention was broken by her waving at him. “Helloooo.”

“Sorry.” Kurt took hold of his luggage, then looked around them. “Okay. We’ll get a hotel room, then find out which station has that number.”

“Or, we could go to Mulhouse.”

Kurt cast his mind back through French class projects. “That’s in the Alsace region. It’s what, six hours away? And it’s _not_ where we’re going.”

“Blaine just called me.” Tina held up Blaine’s phone, glittering across the spiderweb cracks. Kurt didn’t remember giving her it. “He says the police let him go, and he’s in Mulhouse.”

“He called you?” Kurt snatched the phone, cleared the lock screen, and found there was indeed a recent call from a French number. “Why -- how did he know we were here -- is this because he’s --”

“He’s what?”

“Something.” Kurt had no words for it, for the fictional fiancé he had tucked into his suitcase. “Let’s go to Mulhouse, then.”

Tina linked their arms, smiling widely, and tugging their suitcases behind them they left the airport.

\--

Blaine finished the manuscript, and thought about dying.

He shouldn’t have been so surprised. _A cough, from the chest, interrupted the classroom that day_. Tuberculosis. He supposed he’d been drawn in by Ancelin’s desire to see Devon live. He should have realized that to write what you know, to excise your demons on the page as Ancelin had been doing, would mean covering every last ugly detail. He saw why Henri liked it; it made for a dramatic ending. He also saw why Ancelin went with a more hopeful one.

Blaine “Devon” Anderson died in France. Blaine Anderson died in New York. Blaine Devon Anderson lived nowhere.

Nothing seemed preferable, right then. He flipped through the final chapter again, Blaine’s slow descent into illness as he worked as a singing coach, dying with nobody around him, and Sebastian entering stage left too late. Blaine could almost envision it if he closed his eyes, but that was play-pretend. The reality was:

_Blaine left the café and stepped out into the springtime of New York._

followed by

_3 - 2 - 1 - 0._

followed by

 _Blaine was in Mulhouse, a young man named Yannick leaning on a cane next to him as they watched a parade go by. The sights were too loud and sounds too bright, and Blaine was frantic for escape and found only knowledge._ Help him, _his heart said, as his head added_ , His family’s gone.

_Blaine was humbled to be chosen, terrified to leave somebody so alone, and stayed._

_(Nobody ever explained why it had to be him.)_

The book, his story, stories after -- Blaine remembered everything. _Everyone_. Yannick. Trevor. Malia. Abdel. Angie. Nadia. Aleksandros. Frederick. Agatha. Edward. Joshua. Sheila. Nimfa. J.B. Antoine. Felicity. Erik. Anxo. Jemina. Thomas. Seth. Ice. Jie. Élodie. Wesley. Dick. Iman. Gregory. Chelsea. Kurt. Their stories running before his, concurrently, branching off in a maze of history and choices. Some he’d followed up on, some he’d known would be fine, almost like his own children that he wanted safe and happy.

He’d died twice, before. Genuinely, three times during. Many more departures staged that way, Élodie’s and Kurt’s the more dramatic examples, but sometimes he just checked himself into the hospital and never came back. Sometimes, they died ( _Edward_ , twenty-one, fell into traffic during a protest; Blaine with no time to mourn before he turned around in a bar and was hit on by a man with a dying wife he didn’t want to face.) He was no stranger to death, and death no stranger to him, but the idea still rocked him.

He didn’t remember the final chapter of the manuscript. It wasn’t his story, not really.

The stories he did have were ones he would cherish, did cherish. He wasn’t the Blaine who fell off that fire escape but he knew everything that Blaine had, had already changed so much in the past few days, and he knew he could use that change to his advantage. If he’d wanted a real life before it was hardly worth noting, because now the idea strummed and tugged and begged in his ear and heart and the space between his fingers. Everywhere around him said: _live. live. live._

He’d been right. Those times before, they weren’t lives. He was just living out stories with an eye always on when the curtain would be closing. It didn’t cheapen them, but it rushed them. Made a job of love. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want a lot of things.

He had been lost and hidden away and exposed all over and been nothing but cardboard arm candy and twisted out of shape with all the pain, the joy, he was meant to have known. He had struggled for every desperate, broken inch of autonomy he had, and it always came at the cost of knowing he was becoming useless. He was a teenage dream, a dirty little secret, someone’s high school confidential, a slick chrome American prince, everything you could ever want and now all _he_ wanted was to was find some boundaries so he stopped bleeding all over the page and running himself into other people’s lives.

He also figured he’d help people better if he wasn’t giving them his all then stealing it away, likely to leave an emotional vacuum. There were a lot of ways to help people, Élodie said, and she was right. He still wasn’t sure if she was right about his experiences being normal growing up, but he knew that he’d carry all of them with him wherever he ended up next, taking the best parts of them that they had given him.

He was Blaine. And he was going to write his own story.

\--

Blaine decided there was no reason that couldn’t be literal. Sebastian was still missing but he’d left a credit card behind for Blaine, who blithely used a gold-standard card with an endless limit to buy a pack of lined paper and a few pens. Back at the (still empty) hotel room he settled down and started to write.

He had no idea how to summon magic to his bidding, and if this would even work, but if he was born in a printing press surely he would have a natural affinity for this. Not writing, necessarily -- he didn’t know how to make things sound half as nice as the Writer had -- but for making the writing real.

 _This is a story of a boy named Blaine_.

(He liked Britney Spears, he knew that now, and made a mention of it.)

The narrative was mostly his adventures the past few days, infusing every action with how far he was willing to go, conviction turned into conjecture of why he was owed a real chance. It was letting his words flow so he could stop being suspended eternally like the Beast’s rose in its jar, marking time but not experiencing it. He wanted to wilt, but he also wanted to bloom. He put all those wants, all his fears, down across the page in a field of black lace.

He wrote harder, wrist cramping, forcing himself to not get up and take a break. He could finish this, chewing on his lip as he scratched out a vaguely stated wish (“To be happy”) and replaced it with the ability “To make my own happiness.” He wrote, and something clicked inside his head, gears aligning, the universe sewing two parts into a whole.

Blaine’s other half was in these pages.

He finished with that, an acknowledgement, and then decided to add a real acknowledgements page at the start which simply read: _We’ve all helped each other_.

The door opening broke his concentration as he tapped the pages into line, glancing up to see Sebastian. “You’re back,” he said, as he started to number the pages.

“You’re here.” Sebastian’s relief was evident, and Blaine felt the change in the air when he saw the open manuscript one the desk next to Blaine. “You read it.”

“I did.” Blaine gave him a quick smile, still numbering. There were about twenty double-sided pages.

Suddenly, Sebastian was grasping his shoulders turning him around. Blaine went, eyebrows furrowing.

“ _Je t’aime_ ,” Sebastian said, hands tensing, eyes intent as he sank to his knees and bowed Blaine forward with him. “ _Je t’aime_.”

“Sebastian ...” Blaine cupped Sebastian’s face in his hands and kissed his forehead. “It’s okay.”

“You _died_.”

“It’s not the first time.”

“You died in the book.” Sebastian was squeezing almost painfully now. “Everything in that book is true.”

“It’s just the manuscript.”

“But the Writer didn’t want you to read it.” Sebastian reared back, eyes heated. “He must have known something. Have you ever considered that writing it doesn’t make it true, but reading it does? I -- we could have started something.”

It was eerily similar to Ancelin’s words, and Blaine felt a shot of unease. It was true -- if he had died in real life, would seeking reality kill him again? Or would all the changes he’d been through spare him? If nothing else, he still didn’t feel like a Scottish-Filipino-French lounge singer.

“It’s okay,” Blaine said again. “Please, trust me.”

Sebastian’s jaw clenched and he stood up again, releasing Blaine.

“Why don’t you trust _me_ , for once?”

“I do!” Blaine protested, hurt by Sebastian’s snort. “I do trust you.”

“News to me.”

“Sebastian--!”

A knock cut him off. Blaine and Sebastian shared a confused look. It was a little late for a maid’s service.

“If that’s the damn cops ....” Sebastian muttered, striding toward the door. Blaine was a half-step behind, knowing he couldn’t let Sebastian mouth off to the police. Sebastian yanked the door open with an angry, “ _Oui?_ ”

Silence. Blaine tried to peer around Sebastian, and then he heard a familiar, disbelieving laugh.

“Of course it’s you.”

“I could say the same thing.” Sebastian wasn’t moving.

“Is he here? Let me see him.”

“Hmm. _No._ ”

“Sebastian.” Blaine touched his shoulder, and Sebastian stepped aside, leaving Blaine a direct view to see Kurt Hummel standing in the doorway. Their gazes locked, and Blaine smiled, his heart beating to a new pace.

“Hi.”

Kurt hung there for a moment, before throwing himself at Blaine in a bone-crushing hug. Blaine returned it, and knew that wherever he _did_ end up, he’d always have this piece of home.

_tbc_


	6. and life and love

Blaine requested they have some privacy to talk when Kurt started sobbing into his neck.

Much to his surprise -- or not really, once he saw the black cotton dress she was wearing -- Tina had accompanied Kurt. She ushered away Sebastian, snagging their beer that was mysteriously cold with condensation despite Blaine forgetting to put them in the ice bucket. “Come along, old man,” she’d said, amiable in face of his bitter look at Kurt and Blaine, seated together on the bed.

Blaine waited for Kurt’s crying to ease, rubbing him on the back. It was a familiar position, and Blaine had to physically restrain himself from kissing Kurt to ground him, knowing he couldn’t risk a return to his old ways before he knew he was free of them. Finally Kurt choked out: 

“ _Why_?”

“I didn’t have a choice.” Blaine tipped Kurt’s chin up, pointing his gaze toward the clock. “Imagine that spinning, faster and faster. Imagine knowing that it was going to stop soon. That day I left, our clock stopped.”

“You act like someone had a gun to your head.” Kurt sat up, blue eyes flinting. “You went over that railing yourself.”

“It wasn’t about dying.” It was a funny statement considering his existential breakdown/through earlier, but he knew better than to laugh. “Let me explain it to you.”

And Blaine did, about the lives he’d lived, the responsibility he had. Kurt sat patiently through most of it, though his mouth twisted when Blaine mentioned past lovers, and he saw when Kurt realized there was only one bed in this hotel room that he’d found both Sebastian and Blaine in. But he let Blaine finish, and Blaine was pretty sure he wanted to kiss Kurt purely from love right then.

Still, he abstained.

“So I was just another broken person for you to fix.” Kurt drew his arms around himself, and Blaine shook his head.

“I wasn’t fixing you. I was …” Blaine struggled for a second. “Somebody for you to lean on, as you got through some hard times. I only reflected what you needed.”

“Even better. You didn’t want me, and I forced you to--” Kurt stopped, throat working. “God. I’m so sorry Blaine, I’m so sorry --”

“It’s not like that,” Blaine said, reaching forward to cup Kurt’s anxiously bouncing knee. “When I was doing it -- um, reincarnating -- all I wanted was to be there for people. I wanted to see them happy however I could, because I saw their real selves and that made me love them.”

Even more than that, he wasn’t really _real_ , it had taken him nearly a century to develop a spine outside the confines of his outline, but Kurt didn’t need to hear that.

“You keep talking in the past tense,” Kurt said softly.

“My priorities have changed,” Blaine admitted, and Kurt pulled his knee away. “Kurt. It doesn’t retroactively change how I felt about you -- how I feel about you. I love you.”

“And only me?” Kurt smiled emptily.

“I love you,” Blaine repeated. “I love you, and I’ll always love you. Because you’re Kurt Hummel, and there’s nobody else like you on Earth. But I also love Antoine, and Iman, and Joshua, and Élodie, and --”

“Sebastian?”

“And Sebastian,” Blaine confirmed, and Kurt’s face fell. “It doesn’t take away from how I feel about you, Kurt.”

“Then come home.” Kurt’s hands flew forward to grasp Blaine’s. “If you love me, and I love you, that can be enough.”

The temptation pulled at him. To be with Kurt, to have something easy where he was exactly where he should be. But if he did, how long before the clock ran out again? Before he woke up in Canada or Egypt or Brazil or right next door in New York with somebody else? He’d be right back where he started. Or even worse, they stayed together, Blaine soulless and unchanging, stagnating behind his pretty face as Kurt got old and died? That wasn’t a relationship. It was a death watch.

“I can’t.”

Kurt’s hands went limp.

“I see.” Kurt got up, smoothing down his vest. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Kurt …”

“This isn’t over.” Kurt turned on him. “You said you’re trying to change things. So change them. But I’ll be waiting.” Voice high and breathy and achingly sure, he said, “I love you Blaine, and I want to go in this together. You don’t have to be anything but yourself for that.”

“I know.” Blaine smiled sadly. “That’s what I’m trying for.”

“But not to be with me.”

“It’s time I do things for myself, Kurt.” Blaine said it as gently as he could, watching Kurt’s eyes storm over. “You should do the same. I think we’ll both be happier for it.”

Kurt nodded stiffly, said, “I need some air,” then all but ran for the exit. Blaine knew him as well as he knew himself, and he knew that Kurt didn’t want to cry in front of Blaine when things were so raw between them. So Blaine let him go, sinking back on the bed and tiredly rubbing his face.

Tina and Sebastian returned not long after. “Where’s Hummel?” Sebastian asked.

“Outside.” Blaine looked up. “It wasn’t exactly an easy talk.”

Tina and Sebastian shared a look, and Sebastian gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll go check up on him.”

“Don’t kick him while he’s down,” Blaine said. Sebastian’s eyes narrowed.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’m just going to make sure he’s okay.”

Blaine watched in surprise as Sebastian left himself, and raised his eyebrows at Tina, who smiled mysteriously.

“He’s a nice boy, deep down.”

“Uh-huh.” Blaine stood up. “It’s time you and I talk too.”

“About what?”

“You’ve always been Tina, haven’t you?” Blaine gestured. “This isn’t just a preference.”

“Hey! Maybe Tina’s still at Brown right now, and I just took her place.” Tina hummed. “Though you know, if a certain all-seeing being saw that you were about to be involved in a super exciting series of events, she may come down and help you through it from the start of the end. Just, you know, hypothetically.”

“You, me, Sebastian.” Blaine laughed, shaking his head. “Lima had a lot of magic.”

“More than you can even imagine.” Tina reached for her suitcase, which she’d left there before going off with Sebastian. “I even brought something from there.”

Blaine helped her lift the suitcase on the bed, which she unzipped to reveal an absolute mess of candles, herbs, and what looked like a sacrificial dagger. Blaine’s eyebrows shot up.

“I’d ask how you got that through airport security, but …”

“Magic. Yeah. It’s awesome.” Tina shook out her hair. “I’ve never stood in line at the DMV either.”

“Have you ever considered using your powers for good, Ms. Persuasion?”

“What do you think this is, Nightbird?” She gestured to the candles. “It’s time to do your Real Boy spell.”

“What?” Blaine started. “So I have all three things?”

“As of just now.” She grinned. “I could tell you picked up your chisel.” Blaine looked to his story, still lying on the desk by the manuscript and skull. “Exactly. Now help me, because there’s _way_ too many of these.”

Blaine obligingly picked up a large white candle, and placing it where she directed. It took nearly ten minutes to set up the whole room, the bed shoved up against the window in a surprising feat of strength from the both of them. The final product was candles arranged (in a way that felt right) like a many-petalled, stylized sun with room in the center to sit in. Tina had Blaine place his story, the manuscript, and the skull there, and then they arranged themselves cross-legged on the floor with those items between them.

Blaine looked at the candles. “I don’t have a lighter.”

Tina smiled, closed her eyes, and a second later the electric lights flicked off and every wick lit. “There.”

“Okay,” Blaine said reluctantly. “Magic _can_ be cool.”

“I knew you’d come around.” Tina waggled her fingers. “One last test, Blainey Days. Which is which?”

“Proof of death.” Blaine pointed to the skull, then considered the manuscript and his own story. He’d thought the manuscript was his soul, but that was before he’d written his own. He finally understood Tina’s lecture on choices. “The soul,” was his story, and “Honest love” was the manuscript, because it was an honest example of Ancelin’s love for the original Blaine.

“Good.” Tina reached out her hands, palms up, over the array of items. They seemed to move beneath her reach in the flicker and dance of the firelight, and Blaine let himself be lulled by it as he reached out his own hands, palms down. They pressed their hands together, and for a few moments, there was nothing in the room but their even breathing. The outside world faded away and Blaine let it go, uncaring of police or broken graves or the two men downstairs; it was just him, and somebody who’d always liked him with no obligation. Blaine smiled.

“I love you, Tina.”

She made a soft, happy sound.

“Love you too. Now, tell me this: What do you want, Blaine?”

“I want to be myself, without being myself for other people,” Blaine said. “I want to live a real life, not a non-stop storybook. I want a chance to make real choices.”

“And you can live with the consequences?”

Blaine thought on his earlier fears, Tina’s face impassive. This could be it. He didn’t want to die, but he knew there was always a cost for freedom. And he wanted that, the chance to freely make even a choice that might be a mistake, above everything else.

“I can.”

The candles burned in a sudden spurt of fire that painted the whole room orange-hot, and Tina closed her eyes and breathed deeply with it. Just as quickly, the fires went out, smoke hanging in heavy streams in the air. Tina reopened her eyes.

“So mote it be, and all that jazz.”

And like a rug being straightened, the universe righted itself.

\--

_I want to be more than a footnote, the person at your elbow. I want to know how protagonists feel, and I want to feel it so strongly it hurts._

_I want a lot of things_.

\--

There was no way to tell the ending of Blaine's story, because truthfully, it was a beginning.

It was like being born again, like turning the final page of a book to find it had been a door all along, stepping outside and realizing how changed it left you. Being transformed into the person you were always meant to be. And outside the broad sketches, the metaphors and the imagery which used to be the blood in Blaine's veins, there were details. The kind of details you could only get in reality, not found described exactly in however many pages, the kind of details that made for a very precious reality. 

Those details could maybe be summed up. About how Blaine had turned that final page, had made a sacrifice of acceptance to an unknowing world, and what awaited him on the other side. There was a whole other story there, one that included things like medical school and long-distance Skype dates with friends, about living the single life that he'd never known existed. About exhaustion and long days and drawn-out fights, and how he sometimes wondered if he'd picked wrong. But then it was back to this, back to that, seeing the untameable hurricane of Sebastian -- unaffected by the spell, ever turning, ever desperate to leave his mark on others -- and knowing there was no real weight to regret. Not anymore.

Or maybe it wasn't that beginning, but another one with whole new players and memories and what a fresh start would really be. One that was underscored by such more loss, but granted him far steadier happiness, because it was a loss he would never know personally. How magic and things like the Writer, always a little lonelier than the rest of the world in his corner of the sky, couldn't touch a whole new genre of living. How Blaine had so much potential for so many stories, but there would never be a sure way to say _this. this is the truth._ Truth and absolutes, those were rules of a game that Blaine didn't play anymore.

Blaine Anderson was real, and alive, and ready to go off-book. And he wouldn't have it any other way.

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr link](http://boldmistakes.tumblr.com/post/103238742686/striving-and-other-normalcy-blaine-anderson-big-bang)


End file.
